This is a Pink-margined Monkeyflower, a species that looks like hasn't yet made it into the iNaturalist database. Found yesterday by a field trip participant while we were leading a butterfly trip to the Horse Mountain area. This species was just discovered in 2013 and did not make it into the recentmost revision of the Jepson Manual. It is only known from a few locations in Humboldt, Trinity and Siskiyou Counties. More info here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/srnf/home/?cid=STELPRD3815551&width=full
Little short cactus on a hard to get to area in a unbothered area. Shape of bites and height all point towards our beloved Tortoise
One out of four seen today
Scale in mm. On Quercus durata var. gabrielensis.
NOTE: location is approximate, and the GPS coordinates are not precise. This is a very rare species and should be treated as such. It should be considered highly endangered, despite its entire range being within the designated Eagle Cap Wilderness area, global warming and the resultant climate change being an existential threat to its survival, which is likely dependent on sufficient, reliable, and well-timed snowmelt.
I do not know if these are naturally occurring at this location or were planted as part of restoration efforts.
Stem hairs below the cymules are both hirsute-hispid and appressed-strigose
Being killed by Great Blue Heron
Sandy soils, Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve. Part shade.
Part shade in sandy soils, Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve
Potentially? Glaucous leaves, long non-glandular hairs on stems, no obvious burl present. Sunny opening at edge of oak woodland, lower Rinconada Trail. Currently, there doesn't appear to be any Calflora observations for A. pilosula along Rinconada or Santa Lucia Wilderness.
We sampled the fruit from ten plants of Arctostaphylos glandulosa along a 1.8 mile section of the PCT to see how many segments the stones split into. The ten plants included six plants of ssp. glandulosa; three plants of ssp. adamsii, and one plant that had some stems of adamsii, and some stems of ssp. glandulosa, on different parts of the same burl.
We split a total of 128 fruit from 10 different plants, and found they split into 405 segments, for an average of 3.2 segments per fruit.
Individual plants had a wide range in the number of segments per fruit, from 1.7 to 4.3 segments per fruit, with some stones remaining intact, and others splitting into up to six segments.
This plant was #7, with an average of 3.3 segments per fruit. It had glandular nascent infl and glandular twigs.
Number of fruit with 1,2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 stone segments is 1,2,4,3,1,1.
e.g., 1 fruit had intact stones, and 4 fruit had stones that split into 3 segments.
The results of our study, along with other observations we made during the fieldwork, are given here:
https://tchester.org/plants/analysis/arctostaphylos/glandulosa_subspecies_number_stone_segments.html
See also Don's post of this plant:
Identified by Greg Gray
I was listening for owls not too long after dusk. The temperature was in the 50s and the half moon shone brightly. Owls had been vocal. Standing in the dark, I heard a very loud, unfamiliar call that I thought must be either Great Horned or Spotted Owl. It called again, nearby and more intensely. I found myself getting in my car quickly without quite knowing why - it was an involuntary response faster than my brain consciously moved on to IDs like this one. But my brain did get there as I found myself rolling up the window in addition to closing the door, leaving just enough room to record. It was too loud and intense. The sounds moved very quickly from roughly behind my car to in front of my car. When I turned on the car and drove slowly forward, I quickly spotted these two individuals (presumably immature), which I somehow half expected I would see up the road. They were occasionally responding to other calls from the woods (presumably their mother). Photo taken by headlights at 12800 ISO.