Yosemite Valley? – the highest density of herbarium specimens in North America?

On-line herbarium specimen databases are becoming an important tool for studies of plant biogeography.  They will increasingly point directions for plant conservation.   Specimen records are not equally distributed between areas, and many herbaria are not yet functionally digitized..  As pointed out before, the variance in herbarium specimen density between counties within California is high.  

As of today, my data compilation of specimen records for for Yosemite National Park stands at 30,149 specimens, a density of 9.8 specimens/square kilometer – about twice the specimen density for the state as a whole.

Yosemite Valley is perhaps one of the most visited sites on Earth.  A total of ca. 5,450 specimens can be directly or strongly attributed to Yosemite Valley.  Allowing that the area of the Valley floor, and abutting vertical walls, is uncertain,  the area of the Valley is about 20 square kilometers (8 miles long, one mile wide).  Thus, a vascular plant herbarium specimen density for Yosemite Valley is about 272 specimens/square kilometer.

Comparative is San Francisco city and county, with ca. 7800 specimens at ca. 75 specimens/square kilometer.  Also comparative is Bronx County, New York (via Consortium Northeast Herbaria) at 3479 specimens, at 24 specimens/square kilometer.

Yosemite Valley is the most highly collected location in North America. Moreover, in some respects, Yosemite Valley is functionally as urbanized as San Francisco and the Bronx.  

Perennial Erythranthe glaucescens [...Sheild bracted monkeyflower, is, probably, 2 species. II]

Erythranthe glaucescens (nee Mimulus g.) - CNPS List 4 is, in your revised Jepson Manual (2012) - annual.  Nesom (2012) also circumscribes Erythranthe glaucescens as annual.  The type specimen of Erythranthe glaucescens is clearly an annual.  

As Nesom noted (p. 61) Macnair (1996) "behaves as a perennial in the glasshouse".  Furthermore, Nesom cited one specimen (Heller s.n. July 2, 1914) from "canyon Big Chico Creek" as a stoloniferous perennial.

Plants from the Middle Fork Feather River diversion dam, JEPS109856 (DWTaylor #19554) 6/28/2006 are without doubt perennial (see post August 3rd 2013)

Recently, Nesom (2013) discoursed on the duration races of other monkeyflowers:  he observed E. microphylla to be invariably annual, while E. guttata was clearly perennial.  The genomic mechanisms that integrate developmental patterns in higher plants must by definition differ greatly between annual and perennial plants (viz. the vernalization FLC gene pathway in Arabidopsis) - a rosette annual has to have genes that vernalization turns on about when its time...a fruit tree needs cold to fix other vernalization  genes in preparation for flowering each spring...A Sequoiadendron needs to NOT fail to flower each and every year for 3,000 years (a rosette-bearing Sequoia is an extinct Sequoia).  

Within monkeyflowers, a single natural taxon that switches between annual (or "facultative annual", if there is such a thing) and perennial duration is not likely.  Darwin would not approve of the notion of a "facultative annual".

For this reason, perennial Erythranthe 'glaucescens' are best judged an undescribed species.

Below: plants from JEPS109856 under cultivation: note the stolons which grow in directly horizontal radius (grown in pots in sand, these plunged in water). The stolons grow laterally, rooting at the nodes readily, and in this instance, only become negatively geotropic once the side of the pot is reached.  

References:
Macnair, M.R. 1996. The Mimulus page. Pictures of Mimulus species. Mimulus guttatus complex.
Accessed Jan 2012.
Nesom, GL 2012.  Phytoneuron 40:1-123.
Nesom, GL. 2013.  Phytoneuron 2013-68:1-8
Thompson, D. 2012.  Mimulus, pp. 988-998 in: Baldwin etc. revised Jepson Manual

The longest Sugar Pine cone?

Pinus lambertiana has, without doubt, the longest cone of any conifer.  How long? 

• Botany of California (Brewer, Watson & Gray 1880) – 18 inches
• Sudworth 1908 – Forest Trees Pacific Slope – to 23 inches
• Jepson – Silva of California – 1910 – 18 inches
• Jepson 1923 Manual – 18 inches
• Flora North America Vol 2 (1993)  – to 50 cm (19.7 inches)
• Haller & Vivertte in TJM2 – to 60 cm (23½ inches)
• Wikipedia – to 26 inches

The stated range seems to be on the order of 18-26 inches – variation of about factor of nearly 1.5.  Maximal cone length therefore seems to be a statistic which bears investigation.   For example, in the best on-line conifer cone image collection, Arboretum de Villardebelle  (pinetum.org), their cone is only 13 inches long. 

Given the range of cone size estimates, it becomes evident that Sugar Pine cones 26 inches long need to be fully documented: geographic location, herbarium specimen, publication,  posted photographs.    In most conifers, cone volume is roughly correlated with number of seed.  In white pines, cone length, volume and seeds per cone are under strong genetic control (1).  Hence, record a Sugar Pine with cones >23 inches or so merits publicity.

References:

1. Critchfield, W. B., and B. B. Kinloch. 1986. Sugar pine and its hybrids. Silvae Genetica 35(4):138-145

N.B.  Cone length will likely vary by a small factor related to wet weight - perhaps as much as 10%?  Report dry weight %.

An encounter with sea fennel (Crithmum maritimum) on the Monterey Bay – may I see your passport, please?

Crithmum maritimum L., the sea fennel or rock samphire, is a common and conspicuous perennial of Old World sea coasts:  “Maritime rocks, rarely on sand or shingle.  Atlantic Coast of Europe, northwards to Scotland, Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts” reads the range description in Flora Europea (Vol. 2:333).  There are no specimens from California,  nor North America, that I find on-line.

Here I report Crithmum maritimum growing at Aptos, Santa Cruz County, California, United States, North America, western Hemisphere  a geographic location I can not find having been previously recorded, by continent that is.  Exactly at 36.969438/-121.907402.  A single large plant grows out of the treated-wood seawall fronting the beach at Seacliff Beach State Park, at the very highest elevation where wave action very infrequently reaches.

Crithmum maritimum is in a monotypic genus.  The available phylogenetic resolutions place Crithmum near genera in subfamily Saniculoideae, which in California there are a host of natives.   Crithmum is a strong halophyte: seeds germinate moderately even when soaked in sea water.   Crithmum is oleaginous: oils extracted from its seeds are apparently used medicinally.  Wikipedia imparts the factoid “In the 17th century, Shakespeare referred to the dangerous practice of collecting rock samphire from cliffs”.   

How Crithmum maritimum arrived in California is a matter to consider: a) long distance dispersal of seeds across two oceans, via the Panama Canal, or b) escape from cultivation.  

A voucher specimen was duly squished.  

Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) and its sister species (Yucca jaegeriana) are vegetative icons of the arid, continental climate region of the southwesterly Mojave Desert floristic region.    By contrast, as iconic are oak woodlands of cismontane inverse – winter wet, maritime climate California.  The two are exactly inverse.

Lenz (Aliso 24:97-104. 2007) admirably shows that there are clearly two species of Joshua Tree – at this juncture neither taxon has been investigated with molecular methods.   The attached map is an approximation drawn from Little (1976) – red is the distribution of Yucca brevifolia Engelmann and green the distribution of Y. jaegeriana (McKelevy) L.W. Lenz.

The photograph is a site in Oak Creek Canyon, Kern County, in the Techachapi Mountains (15 April 2003, ca. 35.03218 -118.39499) where Yucca brevifolia reaches its most mesic incursion into, barely, cismontane California, thus barely within the California Floristic Province sensu stricto.

Might these extreme western-most Joshua trees have something going for them in the genome department?

Reference:

Little, E.L., Jr., 1976, Atlas of United States trees, volume 3, minor Western hardwoods: U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication 1314, 13 p., 290 maps.

Asymmetric Burl Sprouting in Wieslander’s manzanita

Arctostaphylos manzanita ssp. roffii is one of 6 recognized races of a common, often dominant, California manzanita.  The 6 tetraploid races of Arctostaphylos manzanita largely have allopatric geographic ranges.   The Roof manzanita is not a listed rare plant: it is a relatively uncommon however, and is narrowly endemic to the Cascade and North Coast ranges, with one central Sierran exception (SBBG50844)

The Ponderosa fire burned about;25,000 acres of Tehama and Shasta County in August, 2012.  Areas where I had seen and collected Arctostaphylos manzanita ssp. wieslanderi before the fire, I had not understood the differences between the two subspecies.  In the Ponderosa Fire, both were burnt to a crisp. In May, 2013 I revisited one site, and observed Arctostaphylos manzanita ssp. roffii resprouting.

In the instance recorded here, resprouting did not occurring over the entire burl.  Rather, the only resprouts were originating from below the soil (as seen at the 4 o’clock position on the photo of the burl).  In the present instance, it appears as if the fire was sufficiently hot so as to completely kill all of the exposed portion of the burl, leaving only the below ground parts viable.

Resprouting dymanics of chaparral shrubs following fire, including genetic signaling pathways and how they become activated, are a fertile subject for study.   Burn baby burn...

Photo: resprouting burl on April 25, 2013; ca. 5 miles E of Manton, Tehama County.

N.B.  on the original post, dated 8/23/2013, I mis-identified these plants as A. manzanita ssp. wieslanderi.  On April 11, 2014 I again visited the Ponderosa Fire region as part of my vegetation characterization studies, and confirmed that both infrataxa occur in the region.  A. manzanita ssp. wieslanderi lacks a basal burl, while A. manzanita ssp. roffii has a huge burl.  A. manzanita ssp. roffii is superficially similar to A. patula, which also lacks a basal burl (but does resprout epicormically after fire), and which occurs at higher elevations in the Battle Creek watershed.

Post flowering calyx throat closure in monkeyflowers

Once upon a time (not so long ago, 2012, in a certain esteemed tome which costs $125), about 15 species of monkeyflower were submerged under the name "Mimulus guttatus".  Such a broad treatment is equivalent to submerging species of pine as distinct as Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata), knobcone (P. attenuata), and Bishop Pine (P. muricata) into one species.  For these pines, this is the viewpoint circa 1880. Ignorance is not bliss in the realm of biodiversity conservation.   Many monkeyflowers are rare endemics, and our understanding of their distribution and abundance is primitive.

Erythranthe guttata sensu stricto is a perennial with stolons.  Within Section Simiola, most species have a feature of the calyx after pollination that is distinctive.  In flower, the calyx lobes are of two size orders: the upper is longer, the other 4 are about equal.  Following anthesis, in E. guttata, the lower two calyx lobes curve upwards, accompanied by an expansion of the inter-calyx rib tissues.

We have all seen the touch-receptive stigma of a monkeyflower (or if not, ought to...).  The pollination trigger mechanism in this instance involves a set of genetic instructions independent of those related to fruit maturation.    Fertilization triggers more than one genetic regulatory pathway: 1) quick, make seeds, and 2) even quicker, make the calyx differentiate.  How?

Most of the ca. 40 species of  Section Simiola, including E. guttata, have the post-zygotic calyx differentiation feature to variable degrees: eight species do not (E. utahensis, E. glabratus, E. arvensis, E. michiganensis, E. inamoena, E. geyeri, E. regni, E. visibilis).  

Images: above, two flowers, the lower post-zygotic and the upper at anthesis; below, the two same flowers, the lower post-zygotic.