April 1974 FREMONTIA A Journal of the California Native Plant Society **•"£ wm fWi."- *"*,.,'#• *• [>-. m 1*1 . > J5 * ^'H** * ~V>^i California Native Plant Society Dedicated to the Preservation of the California Native Flora The California Native Plant Society is an organization of laymen and professionals united by an interest in the plants of California. It is open to all. Its principal aims are to preserve the native flora and to add to the knowledge of members and the public at large. It seeks to accomplish the former goal in a number of ways: by undertaking a census of rare, endangered, and extinct plants throughout the State; by acting to save endangered areas through publicity, persuasion, and, on occasion, legal action; by providing expert testimony to governmental bodies; and by supporting fi- nancially and otherwise the establishment of native plant pre- serves. Its educational work includes: publication of a quarterly journal, Fremontia, andaperiodicBulletin; assistance to teachers and school projects; meetings and field trips and other activities of local chapters throughout the State. Non-members are welcome to attend meetings and field trips. The work of the Society is done by volunteers. Money is provided by the dues of members and by funds raised by chapter plant sales. Additional donations, bequests, and memorial gifts from friends of the Society can assist greatly in carrying forward the work of the Society. Dues include subscriptions to Fremontia and the Bulletin. Individual $ 6.00 Family 8.00 Student 4.50 Supporting 20.00 Sustaining 50.00 Send check with address and ZIP code to the Treasurer. ADDRESSES Treasurer; dues and subscriptions; changes of address: CNPS, 2490 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 Officers and General Society Matters: care of Virginia Rumble, Corresponding Secretary, CNPS, P.O. Box 639, Areata, CA 95521 Fremontia: Margedant Hayakawa, Editor, P.O. Box 100, Mill Valley, CA 94941 Bulletin: Alice Howard, Editor, Herbarium, Department of Botany, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 OFFICERS Honorary President.......................Lester Rowntree President....................................John Sawyer Vice-President..............................James B. Roof Recording Secretary .......................Horace K. Burr Corresponding Secretary...................Virginia Rumble Treasurer...................................Don Falconer CHAPTER PRESIDENTS Dorothy King Young Chapter, Gualala........Mary P. Wells Livermore—Amador Valley....................Pat Williams Milo Baker...................................Betty Lovell Monterey Bay ............................James R. Griffin Napa Valley .................................Stephen Rae North Coast..................................James Smith Contributing $ 100.00 Patron 250.00 Donor 500.00 Benefactor 1000.00 Life 250.00 Sacramento Valley ..........................Joy A. Kester San Diego......................................Bill Knerr San Francisco Bay .........................Baki Kasapligil San Luis Obispo County......................V.L. Holland Santa Clara Valley ........................Natalie Hopkins Sierra—Santa Monica ........................Grace Heintz Southern California Botanists ..............Martin F. Stoner OTHER DIRECTORS Paul Badger, Susan Fruge, Gunder Hefta, Leslie Hood, Alice Howard, Don Lynch, Marian Reeve, Wayne Roderick, Wayne Savage, G. Ledyard Stebbins, Dean Taylor, Helen Witham COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN Area Preservation.............................Leslie Hood Bylaw Reform ...............................John Sawyer Chapter Affairs................................Joyce Burr Editorial ..................................Robert Ornduff Educational.............Warner Marsh and J. Martin Weber Environmental Impact Coordinator..............Ken Taylor Field Trips...................................Ted Niehaus Horticultural Advisory ......................James B. Roof Legislative Liaison ..........................Marian Reeve Membership...................................Don Lynch Director, Rare Plant Project...............W. Robert Powell Fremontia Editor.....................Margedant Hayakawa FREMONTIA Vol. 2, No. 1 April 1974 Copyright California Native Plant Society 1974 MATERIALS FOR PI/HLlrATION Members and others arc invited lo submit material for publication in Fremontia and the Bulletin. All time-value material should be addressed to \hc 8 ullctht. Fremontia is a journal for laymen about California plants, fl hopes to be both readable and scientifically accurate. Technical botanical ait ides should be directed to other more scholarly journals. Please double-space copy, using wide margins and fresh typewriter ribbon, on 8V4-by-ll paper, and include name, address, and phone number on the MS. As a general rule, in the interest of consistency, botanical nomenclature will conform to Munz. A California Flora. Please identify each plant referred lo by its botanical name and. if there is one, by its common name. Photographs should be black-and-white glossy prints, preferably N-hy-10 size or accompanied by negatives. THE COVER: Cereits emoryi. sometimes called velvet cactus or coast button cactus, was photographed by Betty Mackintosh near the U.S.-Mexican boundary monument on the coast. In the back- ground are the Coronado Islands and the Bullring by the Sea. This cactus was one of the plants collected by Parry, whose story is recounted in "'The Botany of the Boundary" on page 3. 3 C. C. PARRY AND THE BOTANY OF THE BOUNDARY by Anne Galloway When we see the words—California, 1849—most of us think immediately of the Gold Rush, covered wagons across the plains, men struggling across the isthmus of Panama, ships putting into San Francisco Bay, men converging upon Sacramento and Sutter's Fort. Most people living in the United States in 1849 were thinking the same way, of central California and gold. But another and much smaller group of men was planning to visit southern California, and for a very different reason. In 1848 the United States had acquired a vast territory from Mexico, an area which became the states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Col- orado, Arizona, and New Mexico. There was much to be learned about the new territory besides the fact that gold had been discovered there. But first the new official boundary between the United States and Mexico had to be established. There were few maps of this far western country, none of them very accurate. One showed the Rio Grande river a hundred miles east of its true location. There were other problems. The boundary line from the Pacific Coast was to be drawn from a point one marine league south of the harbor of San Diego. There was no adequate survey of the harbor, and no accepted definition of the length of a marine league. The Boundary Commission Each country agreed to send a boundary commis- sion consisting of surveyors, astronomers, and en- gineers, to meet at San Diego on May 30,1849 to map the territory and draw the boundary line. Included in the United States commission were a number of natural scientists. Beginning about 1840 it was a pol- icy of our government to send naturalists along with military expeditions into the western part of the con- tinent to bring back knowledge of natural resources and potential development. These men usually had duties besides collecting specimens of plants, mam- mals, birds, rocks, minerals, etc. The botanists were carried on the books of the expeditions as surgeons, geologists, surveyors, "computers,"—the job title didn't seem to matter. In 1849 the botanical situation was quite different from what it is today. Taxonomy was the dominant study, and for this there were good reasons. The work of Darwin and Mendel had not yet been pub- lished, nor had the microscope been perfected. Genetics, cytology, and related studies were un- known. But there was plenty of work for the tax- onomists. Large portions of the continent were still unexplored by white men and had not been subjected to their scientific scrutiny. There were, therefore, thousands of new plants to be collected, studied, classified and named. The Botanists Botanists tended to divide into two distinct classes—the herbarium botanists and the plant col- lectors. The principal herbarium botanists were Tor- rey in New York City, Gray in Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts, and Engelmann in St. Louis. Dr. John Torrey was a professor of chemistry at both the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York and at Princeton College. He had the best her- barium in the country, was the senior authority on taxonomy, knew everyone in scientific circles and many people in government and the military, espe- cially those responsible for surveys and explora- tions. He was most interested in the botany of west- ern North America. At Harvard College was Dr. Asa Gray. Between 1842 and 1848 he had developed a botany department which featured plant physiology on an elementary level, lectures on systematic and geographical botany, and laboratory exercises in a botanic garden. He was an excellent taxonomist and author of the standard textbooks of his day. Dr. George Engelmann was a practicing physician in St. Louis who was the recognized authority on cacti and other difficult groups. As most exploring expeditions were fitted out in St. Louis, he was often called upon to help organize them. He knew the country and recruited plant collectors to go into the wilds and bring back new plants. While the herbarium botanists worked in the laboratories and herbaria, the plant collectors took to the field. They had to be good enough botanists to know what to collect, and how to prepare specimens for shipment east. They had to be good travelers, hunters, and mountain climbers, willing to live for months and years away from the cities—and for very small financial rewards. Some collecting was done by men who did nothing else, but often the collector had another occupation by which he earned his liv- ing. There were army officers, physicians, teachers, 4 clergymen, farmers and ranchers who provided the herbarium botanists with specimens. A few men, like Thomas Nuttall of Philadelphia, went exploring and collecting and then returned home to describe, clas- sify and name their own plants, and publish their results. But Torrey, Gray, and Engelmann seldom had time for field work, and depended largely on the plant collectors. At the time of choosing collectors for the boundary survey every eminent botanist had his own candi- date. Asa Gray wanted the job for Charles Wright. William Starling Sullivant, a wealthy amateur in Ohio and an authority on mosses, recommended Dr. John Milton Bigelow. Jacob Bailey, authority on algae and the microscope, and instructor of botany at West Point, chose George Thurber. John Torrey's candidate was Dr. Charles Christ- opher Parry, of Davenport, Iowa. He suggested Parry to Major William Emory, of the Corps of To- pological Engineers, who, as Chief Astronomer and Golden Stars, Bloomeria crocea, are small, orange-yellow flowers, fairly common but not abundant. Originally calledA/Z/ttm croceum it was later re-named in honor of H.G. Bloomer, an early San Francisco botanist. (Photograph by Betty Mackintosh) Commander of the Army Escort, was in effective charge of the work. (Emory ultimately was named Boundary Commissioner.) In 1849 Emory gave Parry a job as plant collector with the boundary survey. Parry was twenty-six years old and almost un- known as a botanist, but he was enthusiastic, hardy, well-educated, and most important of all, he was more than willing to send all his specimens to Torrey who, by this time, was in a most gentlemanly com- petition with his friend and former student, young and ambitious Asa Gray. Parry's title was "Assistant Surveyor and Computer." His actual tasks were to collect plants and make notes on the geology of the regions mapped, to take weather data, and to render medical services as necessary. Born in England in 1823, Parry came to this coun- try with his family when he was nine years old. He was graduated from Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. in 1842 and received his M.D. degree in 1846 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons where he studied chemistry and botany with Torrey. That summer Parry went out to Davenport, Iowa, to es- tablish a medical practice. It was soon apparent that he was more interested in botany than in medicine. In 1847 he collected with a survey party in Iowa and in the following year he collected in Wisconsin and Minnesota. His first published work was a systema- tic catalog of the plants of Wisconsin and Minnesota. He sent the grasses and all doubtful specimens from other families, to Dr. Torrey, his former teacher. This was the beginning of an association which lasted until Torrey's death in 1873. Parry was apparently a very pleasant, likeable man who made friends easily and kept them. He was intelligent and knowledgeable, but not aggressive about it. He was described as a quiet man, the type who knows a great deal more than most people think. And so, in 1849, he found himself going off to California with the boundary commission, in the first surveying party to take the field. The Survey Party at Work Although both the Mexican and the United States survey parties were delayed by gold seekers they were in San Diego by the first of July and were ready to begin work. Major Emory set up Camp Riley on the Punta (Point Loma) near San Diego. He split his company into three groups: the first to establish the boundary point on the Pacific Coast; the second to survey the territory on a straight line between San Diego and the Colorado river; and the third to march directly to the Yuma area to map the confluence of the Gila and Colorado rivers. f^n^ jiylr The famous Torrey pine is known only from the San Diego coast near Del Mar and from Santa Rosa Island. In cultivation it is much taller and more symmetrical than in its native, wind-swept habitat. (Photograph by Anne Galloway) Parry was assigned to the third team under Lieutenant Amiel Whipple. The party set out from San Diego in September, the hottest, driest time of the year, leaving from the San Diego Mission and traveling east and north through the Santa Maria valley (where the present day town of Ramona is located) to reach the main east-west trail at Warner's ranch on Buena Vista creek. From there they marched southeast, often at night to escape the scorching heat of the Colorado Desert. On Sep- tember 22 Parry noted that it was 108° in the shade. In spite of these conditions, Parry made a collection of plants. Lt. Whipple's party returned to San Diego in De- cember and Parry was temporarily released from his duties as surveyor, "computer," physician, and weatherman. He prepared his plant specimens for shipment to Dr. Torrey, but none of them ever reached New York. In Parry's own account: "The important collections of this season were unfortu- nately lost in crossing the Isthmus of Panama while in charge of the late Gen. A. W. Whipple, being prob- ably involved in a disastrous fire while stored in Panama awaiting transportation. In the subsequent year, 1850, this loss was partially made up by some- what extensive collections in the vicinity of the Southern Boundary line, and including a land trip up the coast as far as Monterey." Parry's itinerary in 1850 is not known with any exactness. His collections were made in the vicinity of San Diego, from the seashore to the foothills. He seems to have explored the San Luis Rey region 6 Yucca whipplei was named after Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, officer in charge of Parry's section of the surveying party. During the Civil War he was a major general of volunteers. He died in the battle of Chancellorsville. (Photo by Betty Mackintosh) rather thoroughly, and to have retraced at least part of the journey from San Diego to the Yuma crossing. Many of his plant locations are given simply as "Mountains east of San Diego." This is not very helpful. In the mountains east of San Diego are chaparral-covered slopes, oak woodlands, pine forests, and the tumbled heaps of almost barren rocks of the In-Ko-Pah range. Dr. Torrey never did manage to impress upon his former pupil the impor- tance of giving more exact data. "As he puts no information on the labels of his plants," Torrey wrote, "I sometimes make him sit down while I extract, little by little, what he knows about particu- lar specimens in his collections." But on at least one occasion Dr. Parry was quite specific. In June 1850 he wrote to Torrey: "I have been some 20 miles up the coast to the mouth of the Solidad valley to examine a seam of Lignite which is exposed in the high bluff overlooking the beach.... I have found here a new species of pine growing in sheltered places about the bluff. Its characters are so unique I am in hopes it may be non-descript... if new I wish it with your permission to bear the name of Pinus torreyana." There followed a detailed descrip- tion of the tree. Parry also sent a single cone and a bunch of leaves. The Writing of the Report The work of the Mexican Boundary Survey Com- mission continued for several years. Parry left California and collected in Arizona and New Mexico and then returned to Iowa to write up his results. Major Emory wanted all reports of the work to ap- pear in one definitive report, but the various botanists connected with the survey had other ideas. Apparently the collections belonged more to the plant collectors and their sponsors in the academic institutions in the east than they did to the United States government. Some of the collectors sent their specimens to Asa Gray at Harvard who published them separately before the official report was ready. More than twenty papers concerning the expedition, its collections, and descriptions of the territory sur- veyed appeared in scientific journals before Emory's report was published in 1858 and 1859. Parry cooperated with his friends Emory and Tor- rey. He sent his specimens to Torrey and settled down in Davenport to work on his part of the official report, the introduction to the section on botany. The major portion of the Botany of the Boundary was written by Torrey, Gray, and Engelmann. The survey resulted in the descriptions of new species, revisions, and extensions of the ranges of certain plants. According to one count, 2,648 species were brought back by the field collectors. Many of these, however, were already known from the work of Haenke, Nuttall, and others. In his lifetime Parry collected numerous California species which were new, thirty-two of them from San Diego county. Those from the boundary survey years include, besides Pinus torreyana, the follow- ing: Pinus quadrifolia, Bloomeria crocea, Agave shawii, Jepsonia parryi, Condalia parryi, Cereus emoryi, Opuntia parryi, Mirabilis californica, Del- phineum cardinale, Phacelia parryi, Penstemon ternatus, and others. These were only part of his contribution to the great scientific inventory of the natural resources of the new territory. Later Parry collected and studied the flora of the California mountains and desert, and of the Rocky Mountains, and became an authority on Ceanothus and Arctostaphylos. He was always proud of his work on the Mexican boundary survey. In 1883 he wrote an article for the magazine, Overland, on "Early Botanical Explorers of the Pacific Coast." Among others he mentioned David Douglas and Dr. Thomas Coulter, and he de- scribed the work of Thomas Nuttall at some length. He concluded by discussing the labors of the botanists of the Mexican Boundary Survey, includ- ing those, of course, of Dr. Charles Christopher Parry. Selected Bibliography Dupree, A. Hunter, Asa Gray 1810-1888. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Emory, William H., Report of the United States-Mexican Boun- dary Survey. 2 v. U.S. Department of the Interior, 1857, 1858. Ewan, Joseph, "Botanical Explorers of Colorado—I. Charles Christopher Parry." Trail and Timherline, 268. 1941. Faulk, Odie, Too Far North, Too Far South. Los Angeles: West- ernlore Press, 1967. Goetzmann, William H.,Army Exploration in the American West 1803-1863. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. Higgins, Ethel B., "Type Locations of Vascular Plants in San Diego County, California." Transactions of the San Diego Society of Natural History (12)22, 1959. McKelvey, Susan D., Botanical Exploration of the Trans- Mississippi West 1790-1850. Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 1955. Parry, Charles C, "Early Botanical Explorers of the Pacific Coast." Overland, new series 2, 1883. Preston, C.H., C.C. Parry. Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences 6, 1897. Rodgers, Andrew D.,John Torrey. Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1942. ---------, American Botany, 1873-1892. Princeton: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1944. Whipple, A.W., The Whipple Report. Journal of an Expedition from San Diego, California to the Rio Colorado, from Sept. II to Dec. 11,1849. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1961. Agave shawii is no longer found near the boundary. This picture was taken in Baja California, near Valle la Mision. The plant has broad deep-green leaves bearing red marginal hooked prickles. (Photograph by Bill Mackintosh) 8 THE SPECTACULAR FLANNEL BUSHES by Claire Etienne One of the magnificent floral sights in California is a fremontia in full yellow bloom, aflame in the late spring or early summer sunlight. The flowers suggest oriental paper lanterns; and they are abundant, for fremontias are sizable and spreading shrubs. As the season progresses, the seed pods become woody capsules, surrounded until their maturity by the per- sisting rose-tinged withered calyces and bractlets. Another name for this shrub is flannel bush, which may be a reference to the wonderful-to-look-at but strange-to-touch tiny brick- or grey-colored star- shaped (stellate) hairs which characteristically cover much of the plant. They are irritating to the skin. As may be guessed, fremontia was named for John Charles Fremont, who led two military expeditions to explore California in 1844 and 1845 and briefly served as senator from the new state. He found the plant near the "sources of the Sacramento in the northern part of the Sierra Nevada of California"—presumably in the foothills. The botanist John Torrey named it Fremontia californica. Today we know the genus as Fremontodendron, for the name Fremontia, it turned out, had been used for a different group of plants in another family, at an earlier date. There- fore, by botanical rules that name could not be ap- plied to the flannel bushes—even though it was so used for many years. And so the name Fremontodendron was chosen, but fremontia re- mains the most-used common name. The plant is placed in the Cacao family (Sterculiaceae). Use in the Garden Fremontias are fine garden plants if their few needs can be met. They cannot stand watering during the summer months; excessive watering favors root-rot organisms which cause the death of the plant. They need well drained soil and enough room to spread their showy branches. Perhaps surprisingly, fremontia was grown in Eng- land from the mid-1800s. There it grows best with the protection of a wall. It is probable that many more fremontias were cultivated in England at that time than in their native land, for the luxury of gardening was less common in the Wild West. From time to time in the last century, Fremontia californica was the subject of articles in European garden publica- tions. Another species, F. mexicana as it was called then, was available in the nursery trade in this coun- try in the 1920s, but it has found relatively little place in California gardens since that time except in southern portions of the state. In addition to Fremontodendron californicum. which occurs from the western Sierran foothills from Shasta County to Kern County and south to San Diego County, andF. mexicanum, which occurs in southern San Diego County and northern Baja California, botanists in the 1930s discovered three new forms of fremontia. It was decided that the new kinds were distinct enough to be named as separate species: F. crassifolium, from the central inner Coast Ranges, F. napense, from Lake, Napa, and Yolo Counties, and F. obispoense from San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. Another, F. Fremontodendron mexicanum Drawings by Diana Gregory Fremontodendron calift decumbens, from El Dorado County, was described in 1965. Subsequently, botanists of another opinion, who saw only the original two as valid species, called the other four forms subspecies. These were con- sidered only variations of F. californicum. In gen- eral, these subspecies differ among themselves in flower and leaf size and amount of hairs. Groundcover Form The semi-prostrate habit of Fremontodendron californicum subsp. decumbens (which has orange rather than yellow flowers) makes it not only a possi- ble plant for containers such as hanging baskets but also a fine potential ground cover or cascading plant. However, care must be taken to keep the branches from touching moist ground—a gravel mulch is helpful—for this plant is quite susceptible to a damaging unidentified wilt disease. Perhaps among the products of a cross between L. californicaum subsp. decumbens and F. 'California Glory' now growing experimentally (but yet to flower) at the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation, there will be an exciting alternative. Although not all fremontias have been cultivated, all are handsome. They flower for many months, and they so resemble each other that the genus is distinct and unmistakable. A particularly showy clone which was developed in cultivation is Fremontodendron 'California Glory', presumably a natural hybrid bet- ween F. californicum and F. mexicanum. It was brought to the attention of the public around 1950 by cum subsp. decumbens the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, where it originated at the time the garden was located in Orange County. In spring this cultivar bears an abundance of large lemon yellow blossoms which almost completely cover its branches. From a cross between Fremontodendron califor- nicum (fine form) and F. mexicanum (Lenz 8-030) made in 1956, Rancho Santa Ana has recently named and introduced two clones: F. 'Pacific Sunset'and F. 'San Gabriel'. At present they are not available in the nursery trade. Stellate Hair of Fremontia Although fremontias can be propagated success- fully by seed, the progeny produced from seed of the 'California Glory' cultivar are so different from each other (because of hybrid segregation variability) that the number of very desirable forms which results is small. Seeds of the other species of fremontia may be germinated by soaking in boiling water or weak lye, by sandpapering, or by treatment with concentrated hydrochloric acid for about ten minutes. They may be planted in a mixture of one-fourth peat moss 10 and/or perlite and three-fourths loam. Waiting time for germination is from one to three months. Another more difficult method of propagation is by tip cuttings (taken from May to July), which should be treated with a rooting compound and then placed in a combination of three-fourths perlite and one-fourth peat moss and given intermittent misting. One special technique, which is used by the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation for propagating seedlings and rooted cuttings of many native plants is that of artificially supplying long days (called extended photoperiod) to encourage vegetative growth. Availability in Nurseries It is not always easy to find fremontias in nurse- ries. Although a number of California wholesale and retail nurseries list them, kinds and quantities of plants available vary greatly from time to time. Other nurseries may be able to obtain plants on order. The following listing includes retail and wholesale nurse- ries which in March 1974 reported that they have now or generally have plants for sale. The kinds offered are indicated by letters: Fremontodendron californicum (C),F. mexicanum (M), F. 'California Glory' (CG), andF. californicum subsp. decumbens (D). Wholesale Flower Garden Nursery 3645 N. Main St. Soquel 95073 (CG) Leonard Coates 400 Casserly Rd. Watson'ville, 95076 (M) Retail Berkeley Horticultural Nur- sery 1310 McGee Berkeley 94707 (M) others as available Theodore Payne Foundation 10459 Tuxford St. Sun Valley 91352 (M) (CG) The Shop in the Sierra Box 1 Midpines 95345 (M) (CG) Western Hills Nursery 16250 Coleman Rd. Occidental 95465 (M) (CG) (D) Yerba Buena Nursery 19500 Skyline Blvd. Redwood City 94062 (as avail- able) Those species which are not available commer- cially may be propagated by taking cuttings with great care from an existing plant by the method out- lined above. Fortunately fremontia is appearing more and more in gardens and even in highway plantings. Perhaps someday soon it may cease to be one of those over- looked California plants and be recognized as ideal material for beautiful, low-maintenance landscap- ing. Saratoga Horticultural Found- ation P.O. Box 308 (M) Saratoga 95070 Seed Clyde Robin (C) (M) P.O. Box 2091 Castro Valley 94546 A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF CNPS Dear Member: The past year has seen some significant changes in the structure and functioning of the Society. It has been a period of rapid growth, not only in member- ship and chapters, but also in the variety of activities. One of the most obvious areas of growth has been in the creation of the San Francisco Bay Chapter, the Napa Valley Chapter, and the Livermore/Amador Valley Chapter. This brings our total to thirteen. I hope that the initial spirit of interest among the Marin group can be rekindled so that an active chapter in that area will once again be a reality. The formal structure of the newly formed San Francisco Bay Chapter guarantees that the Bay Area membership will have a group responsive to local needs and issues. The Board, freed of regional oblig- ations, can now turn its attention even more to statewide policy. The quarterly weekend meetings of the Board of Directors have allowed for a full partici- pation in accomplishing needed Society business. Additionally, much of the routine business is now handled by the officers by telephone. Visiting almost every chapter in the past few months has proved to be a most rewarding experi- ence for me. This allowed me to meet many of our local officers and members, thereby increasing the two-way flow of communication. I am pleased that so many of the chapters are very busy promoting the aims of CNPS. It seems that much of the year was spent in revis- ing the Bylaws. We hope that these revisions will allow the Society to function more effectively. Many of the changes actually do nothing more than recog- nize traditional Society procedures. We have, at last, a policy which effectively implements our participa- tion in the review of Environmental Impact Statements/Reports. The procedure seems to be working quite efficiently. It is difficult to imagine that the earlier issues of Fremontia could be improved, but Marge Hayakawa's active, enthusiastic, and thoroughly professional approach has done it. I see Fremontia continuing in its crucial role as a major vehicle for Society growth and influence. I hope that you are as encouraged as I am at the Society's growth and ever-increasing commitment to California's native plants. Sincerely, John O. Sawyer, Jr. February 1974 President ;.,^:* ¦ i'^> ^''^ ,,.,« / • " ^ • "'^€j*Rv^ ^' .:*- . •** «..'*, • ^c Outcrops of non-serpentine rock in the midst of serpentine bald slopes in the Clear Creek drainage. (Photograph by J.R. Griffin) A STRANGE FOREST IN SAN BENITO COUNTY by James R. Griffin In general the Diablo Range of southern San Be- nito County presents a pastoral scene with cattle grazing on meadows scattered through woodland- and chaparral-covered foothills. But between Her- nandez and New Idria a prominent mountain rises above the ranchlands. Here there are no cattle, for there is no grassland. Instead, this San Benito Moun- tain region features scraps of a peculiar forest and bald slopes almost devoid of vegetation. Since the early ranchers had no use for such land, San Benito Mountain remained in the public domain. Over the years this chunk of federal land surrounded by pri- vate ranches has been heavily used, and abused, by the public. Some special environmental and histori- cal factors have affected San Benito Mountain vege- tation, and, in addition, the entire scene furnishes an instructive example of plants surviving under dif- ficult, even hostile, circumstances. For forest growth the climate is not especially favorable. Although San Benito and Santa Rita Peaks exceed 5,000 feet in elevation, their annual precipitation is low. Records at Hernandez and New Idria average about sixteen inches, although the higher ridges may receive some twenty inches of rain or snow per season. Summer temperatures aren't much cooler than those of the adjacent San Joaquin Valley. William Brewer, the first professional botanist to visit the area, was impressed by the sum- mers. He complained that "I can hardly conceive a place with fewer of the comforts of life ... a fearfully hot climate where the temperature months together ranges from 90° to 110° F." While hot, dry summers are undesirable for grow- ing forests, such a climate is not extreme by Califor- nia standards. The truly extreme feature of the San Benito Mountain landscape is the sterile serpentine 12 --_ +** %^aa-^::-w -f This photograph of a raw serpentine gulch was made in 1932 by A.E. Wieslander, of the U.S. Forest Service. A 1973 picture from the same point shows essentially no change in the pines, the surface of the bald slopes, or even the log in the foreground. soil. A mass of serpentine (altered ultrabasic rock) fourteen miles long and four miles wide is exposed along the San Benito Mountain ridge. Ultrabasic rocks outcrop in many parts of California, but in few places has the end product of serpentinization and alteration had such a devastating effect on the land- scape. High in Magnesium From the standpoint of plant nutrition, the impor- tant property of soils derived from serpentine is their excess of magnesium and deficiency of calcium. For example, one surface sample from a bald slope on San Benito Mountain had nine times as much availa- ble magnesium as calcium. Normally calcium should be most abundant. Associated with such a toxic magnesium-calcium imbalance are a number of un- desirable chemical and physical properties. For ex- ample, the soil sample mentioned above had a level of total nitrogen near .006% and total phosphorus barely detectable! Small wonder the mountain didn't attract ranchers. Native grazing plants, or even most introduced weeds, cannot tolerate such low nutrient levels. Only a select group of plants which can ex- clude toxic elements and concentrate the limited nutritive values have a chance here. Aside from the physiological problems of serpen- tine soils, this sort of geologic setting usually trig- gers waves of prospecting and mining. In the case of San Benito Mountain the first wave involved cin- nabar, a rich mercury ore often found in California near the edges of serpentine masses. The first real public attention to the minerals on San Benito Mountain dates from 1853 when Mexican prospectors located the original Aurora and New Idria claims. Details of these discoveries are fuzzy. Apparently chromite deposits were initially mis- taken for silver ore. But in the process of working the bogus silver claims these prospectors blundered onto one of the major mercury producing areas in North America. Bret Harte, in "A Story of a Mine," gave acolorful account of the financial, political, and sometimes bloody mischief resulting from disputed New Idria claims. Large-scale exploitation of the mercury claims developed rapidly. The mining activity was concen- trated on the eastern fringe of the forest between New Idria and San Carlos Peak. The profound influ- ence early mercury mining had on the forest was not in any digging activity—but in logging. A vast number of mine timbers went into the tunnels and huge amounts of firewood into the furnaces. These demands for forest products were met from the forest conveniently located above the mines. During the first fifty years of mining there was little control on the use of this public forest. Later assaults on the serpentine landscape came during the First and Second World Wars when de- mands for chromium were high. The whole serpen- tine mass was intensely prospected for chromite, a chromium ore. The Aurora mine yielded the most chromite. This sort of prospecting and mining didn't involve much new tree cutting, but it prompted a great deal of digging and poorly planned road con- struction. In recent decades a third major prospecting effort has further churned up the landscape. Bulldozers have wandered over the entire area rooting around for asbestos and associated minerals. Open-pit min- ing for asbestos is now concentrated in the southern portions of the serpentine mass below Santa Rita Peak. Present Vegetation The grassy woodland and normal chaparral grow only on the surrounding sedimentary rocks. On the serpentine rock a different type of chaparral forms a complex mosaic with patches of conifer forest and barren talus slopes. FOREST. The San Benito Mountain "forests" are never dense. They have the odd feature of lacking hardwood trees, even along the creeks. The three oak species which grow as trees in adjacent wood- lands are absent or insignificant on the serpentine. Four conifer species in various combinations make 13 up the tree communities. Part of the forest grows on bluish-colored serpentine without any obvious shrub or herb understory, or even any real''soil." The rest of the forest has chaparral shrubs scattered beneath it. On the shrub-covered areas the soil has developed into a rocky, reddish clay. In the forest small incense-cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) are common but seldom dominant. A few Jeffrey pines {Pinus jeffreyi) appear in widely scat- tered locations. Digger pines (Pinus sabiniana) are liberally sprinkled about, particularly in chaparral situations. Coulter pines (Pinus coulteri) dominate most of the second-growth stands. The San Benito incense-cedar locality is interest- ing, for the tree is uncommon in the south Coast Ranges. Small populations survive on non- serpentine in the Santa Lucia Range to the west in Monterey County, but they are concentrated along creeks and protected canyons. San Benito Mountain incense-cedars thrive in many habitats including the most exposed ridges. The closest incense-cedars to the north are in northern Napa County; to the south they appear in Santa Barbara County. San Benito Jeffrey pines are also quite interesting. This is the only south Coast Range population. The closest Jeffrey pines to the north are in northern Lake County—to the south in Santa Barbara County. Jeffrey pine and Digger pine rarely grow together. Jeffrey and Coulter pines meet on several mountains in southern California. The combination of these three related pines all growing together can not be duplicated anywhere else and is of great in- terest to forest geneticists. San Benito Mountain Jeffrey pines are notoriously variable. Bruce Zobel, who studied them in the 1950s concluded that "judged on cone characteristics alone, this population of Jeffrey pine is very differ- ent, and its study leaves a great deal of uncertainty in the investigator's mind as to just what constitutes a typical Jeffrey pine cone." One obvious source of variability comes from the Coulter pine. When the two pines meet, there are often a few hybrids around. Here there are many intermediate forms. In fact, there may be more hybrid versions of Jeffrey pine on San Benito Mountain now than recognizable paren- tal Jeffrey pines. A few of the peculiar Jeffrey pines * "'< •> .; ¦¦¦¦ ,.*¦ .-*¦ -. ~^lt iff. '. *i " Old growth conifer forest in the Clear Creek area with large, very old incense-cedars among the pines. (1914 U.S. Forest Service report) 14 :7*\ '.-*¦'» .---'iS*-. IS tf *'.. ¦ : ¦ ti/t-y- Kim* •» &c «.-.*; *¦ .;¦'..¦ «¦*>. $feaa **£> .'¦"s-v *". '**??-.. L./-^& A skinny Digger pine with a very narrow crown in a chaparral portion of the Clear Creek drainage. (Photograph by J.R. Griffin) about, particularly at lower elevations. In terms of shrubs commonly associated with montane forests, San Benito Mountain examples are almost nil. For example, I have found only two individuals of deer brush (Ceanothus integerrimus) on the serpentine. INTERESTING HERBS. At least sixteen species or subspecies on San Benito Mountain are commonly restricted to serpentine throughout their ranges. A few herbaceous examples of such endemics are Hesperolinon disjunction, Linanthus ambiguus, Monardella douglasii, and Streptanthus breweri. Four of these serpentine endemics will appear in the CNPS rare and endangered plant list: Camissonia benitensis (in Munz, Camissonia = Oenothera) and Layia discoidea, which are both confined to the San Benito Mountain region; and Fritillaria falcata and F. viridea, (in Munz, F. lanceolata) which both grow on other serpentine areas. The region sharing the greatest number of serpentine endemics with San Benito Mountain is the Red Mountain-Del Puerto section of western Stanislaus County. Some dozen additional species are apparently con- fined to serpentine on San Benito Mountain. These species may prefer serpentine soils in a few other portions of their ranges. Several examples are Calochortus invenustus, Lewisia rediviva, and Psoralea californica. Some San Benito Mountain herbs have no obvious serpentine connections but appear to be south Coast Range outposts of dry- montane, often southern California, species, e.g. Allium burlewii, Astragalus purshii var. tinctus, and Melica stricta. have cones that clearly suggest ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) influence. It is even possible that Digger pines might be involved in the Jeffrey pine variability, although these two pines are not known to hybridize. CHAPARRAL. Some twenty shrubby species grow on the serpentine. Leather oak (Quercus durata) dominates much of the chaparral. Two manzanitas are locally common. Bigberry manzanita (Arctostaphylos glauca) forms large, upright, non- sprouting shrubs. A second species, often referred to as Mexican manzanita (Arctostaphylos pungens) forms big colonies. It doesn't sprout from burls either, but the drooping branches readily layer. There are suggestions of hybridization between the two species. A silk-tassel (parrya congdoni) and Jepson barberry (fierberis dictyota) grow at all eleva- tions but are never common. Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), buck brush (Ceanothus cuneatus), and other typical chaparral species are scattered Changes in the Vegetation After poking around these conifer stands a few times, I began to wonder if their species composition had not shifted over the last century. A more critical look at the forest and portions of the chaparral re- vealed that a lot of large incense-cedar trees used to grow here. Rot-resistant cedar stumps are all over the place once you start looking for them. Unfortu- nately, pine stumps rot more quickly, and it is dif- ficult to find evidence about the relative amount of pine removed in early logging. But from current con- ditions it appears likely that Coulter and Digger pines regenerate more aggressively than the other trees. Maybe each fire, logging spree, or other disturbance has encouraged Coulter or Digger pines at the ex- pense of incense-cedar or Jeffrey pine. At this point I wished that William Brewer had spent less time down in the mines and more time describing how the forest looked in 1861. Although he rode around the serpentine region several days 15 collecting new species, Brewer said almost nothing about the trees. One comment in his notebook con- cerned incense-cedar: "forms large trees ... said to be local here ... no fruit seen and men tell me it rarely has any ... over very dry hills near the summit of San Carlos." The next botanists that I know traveled in the region were Alice Eastwood in 1898 and William Dudley in 1899. They also collected plants but left no vegetation notes. In 1907 Willis Jepson made his pilgrimage to San Benito Mountain. He was more sensitive to forest conditions. As soon as he reached the serpentine zone on upper San Benito Creek, he described a "thin forest" of Coulter, Jeffrey, and Digger pines along with incense-cedars. Concerning Jeffrey pine, which he called yellow pine at the time, Jepson noted that:' 'Most of it logged. Fair reproduc- tion but seed trees exceeding scarce." Concerning Digger pine, Jepson added: "Reproduction very good, better than either of the other two pines." He was impressed with the relatively straight and nar- row crowns on many Digger pines here, and my observations confirm this. Further up the mountain Jepson was appalled at the bald patches: "Great areas on the summits and ridge slopes are as barren as one's hand, not even herbaceous vegetation." In the probable vicinity of upper Sawmill Creek, Jepson wrote that "The trees have been logged clear for the mines, even the six inch stuff taken ..." Near the top of San Benito Mountain he noticed an incense-cedar stump five feet in diameter three feet above the ground. The historical evidence is too skimpy to form a good picture of the extent, density, and composition of the pre-1850 forest. But the earliest facts I can find are consistent with the suggestion that the forest had a larger proportion of incense-cedar and Jeffrey pine trees. The area of barren slopes has probably in- creased, but they have always been prominent. The amount of chaparral may well have increased as the forest was disturbed. Late in 1907 the federal government finally acted to conserve the natural resources of San Benito Mountain. Teddy Roosevelt created a 140,000-acre "San Benito National Forest." The following year this unit was merged with the Monterey National Forest. Although the bulk of the old-growth timber was already gone, the U.S. Forest Service had reasonable plans for managing the remaining re- sources, particularly the watershed values. In 1910 they even made a 50-acre experimental Jeffrey pine plantation on a bald slope. A detailed report on the National Forest was prepared in 1914. Woodrow Wilson in 1916 abruptly "eliminated" the San Benito unit of the Monterey National Forest. The land reverted back to the public domain to be passively administered by the Bureau of Land Man- agement. I have found no official explanation for the abandonment of the National Forest. I assume the region was so covered with conflicting mineral claims that it became an administrative nightmare. During the following decades mining activity con- tinued in a routine manner. In 1932 the Vegetation Type Map survey of the U.S. Forest Service mapped the vegetation and took some landscape photo- graphs. Fires periodically swept parts of the moun- tain that had enough fuel to burn. One severe fire occurred in 1943. Botanical interest in the local ser- pentine endemics gradually increased. Bruce Zobel, graduate student at U.C. Berkeley, and the Institute of Forest Genetics at Placerville studied the Coulter-Jeffrey pine hybrids. The California Divi- sion of Forestry at times collected large quantities of seed from Coulter pines on San Benito Mountain. A communications relay tower was placed on the summit. Finally in the last few years the level of' 'outdoor recreation" use rose dramatically. With the coming of the Honda era, the network of bulldozer trails connecting the bald slopes attracted hordes of off- road motorcycles. In short order motorcycles prob- ably caused more soil disturbance than the previous century of prospecting, mining, and logging. Natural Area Established In 1971 the Bureau of Land Management, largely at the request of CNPS, established the 1,500-acre San Benito Mountain natural area. Botanically, the spot selected was a desirable choice with a good selection of forest, chaparral, riparian, and bald slope habitats. At least three, and perhaps all four, of the CNPS rare species present in the region grow within the natural area boundaries. The area has suffered less motorcycle damage than the lower Clear Creek drainage. The documents establishing the natural area in- clude such phrases as: "The lands require the pro- tection afforded by the above segregation to main- tain the natural environment" and "The lands shall not be used, occupied, constructed upon, or im- proved in a manner inconsistent with the purpose for which the area is established." Legally and physi- cally, however, the Bureau of Land Management still lacks the power effectively to enforce such pro- tections. Perhaps these San Benito plants which have with- stood harsh climate, severe nutritional problems, and increasing violence by man, can hang on until the public learns, or is legally required, to respect them a little more. 16 THE MANY CAREERS OF CNPS' NEWEST FELLOW by Joyce Stevens ; Beatrice Howitt, ¦...... bacteriologist, botanist, j. conservationist, has been ,,A3 t*>¦';-=? ., named a fellow of California ¦*'"'*, '"" /¦"' K ' Native Plant Society. She is \ ' -"¦' the founder of the Monterey Bay Chapter. Beatrice Howitt, of Pacific Grove, has been named a Fellow of the California Native Plant Soci- ety. She is one of the first to be so honored—a fitting recognition for a lifetime of service to the community and to others. Beatrice Howitt's career—or more properly careers—which span many years, have in recent years included the founding of the Monterey Bay Area Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, serving as first, its president and now its vice presi- dent. She also works with the Nature Conservancy, the Monterey Peninsula Audubon Society, and the Monterey Peninsula Museum Association, among other conservation activities. What is not generally known is that her present career as botanist and conservationist started more than twenty years ago after her retirement as a na- tionally known bacteriologist and research worker in the fields of influenza, poliomyelitis, en- cephalomyelitis, and spotted fever. Interest in Medicine Beatrice was born in San Francisco and brought up in San Rafael, where her father was a physician who remained in practice until the age of eighty- seven. After her mother died, Beatrice became housekeeper and general assistant to her father, de- veloping an interest in medical sciences which led her to obtain a part-time job in the laboratory of the Stanford Medical School. After World War I she obtained a B.A. in bacteriology in 1924 at the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in protozoology the following year. Her master's thesis dealt with amoeba of the mouth and led to further work on mouth bacteria and viruses, principally poliomyelitis and encephalomyelitis, which became her specialties. It was Miss Howitt and Dr. Karl F. Meyer who first discovered a western strain of en- cephalitis, differing from the eastern. During World War II Miss Howitt worked to de- velop an influenza vaccine for the army at the Lederle Laboratories at Pearl River, N.Y. In 1944 the U.S. Public Health Service sent her to Hamilton, Montana to take charge of vaccine production for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Then followed six years in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Communica- ble Disease Center of USPHS, where she created a virus laboratory and saw much of her research find- ings published. A Busy Retirement Miss Howitt chose the Monterey Peninsula for her retirement home (a fortunate choice for the Penin- sula). She obtained a part-time job at Hastings Natural History Reservation in Carmel Valley where she collected plants for John T. Howell, now curator emeritus of botany at the California Academy of Sciences. The book, Vascular Plants of Monterey County, co-authored by Mr. Howell and Miss How- itt, was based primarily on specimens which she collected during this period as a field associate of the Academy. They have recently published a supple- ment to this book. "It was fun," she said. "I began finding out all I could about Monterey County and its flora and hiked over a good many of its hills. I didn't have a car, so friends helped me bring in food—I had an apartment in the house on the Reservation which the John Davises now occupy. If I wanted really to wander afield, there was all of Los Padres National Forest, and my legs were younger then than they are now. I became interested in camera work and developed my own methods." A second book, Wild/lowers of the Monterey Area, for which she was both author and photographer, resulted. Dr. Betty Davis, who with her husband Dr. John Davis and two children has lived at Hastings for many years, recalls their early years when Beatrice also lived there. Beatrice, who has never driven a car, raised "getting a ride" to the level of an art form. "Somehow it always seemed a privilege to take Bea on an excursion somewhere, and I recall many days 17 that we traveled, with brakes burning, over the back roads, stopping frequently so Bea could photograph the flowers." Life at Hastings, although generally tranquil, provided a few excitements like the time that Bea's kitchen stove blew up and Bea, with stove lids flying, took shelter under the table, emerging after the shooting was over with a quarter inch of soot over her. After six years at Hastings, Miss Howitt took a trip to Africa and Australia, returning to find that the California Native Plant Society wanted her to estab- lish a branch on the Monterey Peninsula. She founded it and has been its guiding light ever since. During her long term as secretary of the Nature Conservancy's Monterey Bay chapter, the effort to establish Jacks Peak Park won its initial victory, largely through her efforts. Future Plans Beatrice Howitt would still like to see a botanic garden of native plants, similar to Santa Barbara's, created on the Monterey Peninsula. Meanwhile she and research biologist Judson Vandevere of Mon- terey, both of whom possess permits to collect at Point Lobos, Molera State Park at Big Sur, and other state park areas, have been updating and replacing a herbarium at the Point Lobos Reserve, originally created under a Carnegie Foundation grant. A simi- lar collection is also being established at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Testimonials to Miss Howitt's outstanding qual- ities are endless, but Vernal Yadon, curator of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, summed it up: "She's a collector's collector." Although the nomination to the CNPS Fellowship is the highest honor our Chapter can offer, it is not nearly enough to express our admiration and devotion to Beatrice Howitt. A U.S. Army jeep driver who drove Miss Howitt, Maj. Gen. and Mrs. F.L. Culin, and Sarah Schenck on a jeep tour of Hunter Liggett Military Reservation some years ago observed Beatrice con- tinually stopping and kneeling down to photograph the flowers. He put it succinctly when he said, "She sure do love her flowers." ROBERT BEARD It was with great sorrow that members of the Society received word of the death of Robert Beard at the age of ninety-one. Bob and his botanist wife Helen-Mar were active in founding the California Native Plant Society nine years ago. Many early decisions were made in the hos- pitable glow of the fireplace in their lovely old Berkeley home. A career officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in two world wars, Colonel Beard after retirement turned to teaching pure spatial mathematics. He and his wife greatly enjoyed ex- ploring California and studying its native plants. Following Helen-Mar's retirement the Beards moved to Trinidad, near Areata, where Bob died March 13. A number of CNPS members have made con- tributions to the Society's new Conservation Fund in Robert Beard's memory. —Alice Howard JOHN S. BRYANT In memory of John S. Bryant, who died in Feb- ruary, the East Bay Regional Park District, on whose board he served, has dedicated a nature trail to him in the Black Diamond Mines area. The District also announced its intention of naming for him a grove of Coulter pines when it becomes part of the Park District. John Bryant was also a past board member of California Native Plant Society and one of its founders. For many years he headed CNPS' Edu- cation Committee, giving active leadership to its work with schools and teachers. As principal of the Heights School in Pittsburg, he led in the establishment of a native plant garden for the chil- dren at his school. Memorial donations to this cause may be sent to the John Bryant Botanic Garden Memorial Trust Fund, Wells Fargo Bank, 415 Railroad Ave., Pittsburg, Ca. 94565. —Joyce Burr 18 IMPACT REPORTS — A CONSERVATION TOOL FOR CNPS by Ken Taylor Exploitation of natural resources has been under way in California for close to 200 years. During Spanish and Mexican eras, environmental disruption was minimal. With the advent of Yankees on the scene, their construction of a saw mill at Coloma, and the attendant discovery there of a yellow metal, a boom in all kinds of construction activities was set off. It apparently has not yet reached its peak. Re- grettably, many such activities were as destructive in the long run as they were constructive. Towns were built squarely on top of seismic faults. Dams were built in areas where the first really heavy rain would flood them out. Long Toms washed down whole mountains in the name of gold. Railroads gouged their tortuous ways through or over high mountain passes. Forests disappeared almost overnight to meet the insatiable demand for structural materials. Shining highway ribbons of asphalt or concrete now stretch from the Mexican border to the Siskiyous, from San Francisco to Truckee. Decade after decade of frantic activity slipped by with scant consideration being given to the effects of construction on the environment. In the latter part of the 1950s, however, there came the slow realization that the natural resources of the state (and nation) were being pillaged. Esthetic values began to take on new meaning. Many segments of natural resources disappeared, and when they were gone, some were gone forever. Public opinion began to recognize, with glacial speed it seemed, the need for a planning system that would accord the environment a more prominent place in the planning process. In earlier days, corporate and individual greed appeared to dominate whatever planning was done. In some cases sheer stupidity led to devastation of land cover and eventual destruction of land itself. Still it is only fair to acknowledge that many wrong things were done because man had little or no know- ledge of the interlocking factors that make up an environment. Early Conservation Measures It is not correct to conclude, of course, that no one gave any thought at all to the need for protection of natural resources. Late in the last century and early in this one, the establishment of the Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Park System in the Department of the Interior were moves toward conservation. But these actions re- sulted largely from edicts on high rather than from a ground swell of public opinion. Indeed, the grazing, lumbering, and mining interests were in violent op- position to this type of conservaton and, to a great extent, still are. Perhaps the first real public demand for a change, at least in California, occurred in the mid-1940s when legislation curtailed the activities of gold-dredging operations whose great machines left mounds of rubble in their wake. But this legislation affected only one small area of the economy. What was needed was basic legislation that would relate to all activities, that would require consideration of all environmental factors before actual on-the-ground work got under way. It was slow in coming, but it came! Federal and State Laws In 1969 Congress passed the National Environ- mental Policy Act (NEPA). It became law in 1970. And in 1970 the California Environmental Quality Act was also enacted. Both of these pieces of legisla- tion are long and involved and full of policy, pro- cedural details, restrictions, requirements, etc., ad infinitum. Even so it is worthwhile to summarize the basic intent of each. NEPA requires, in part, that all Federal agencies "utilize a systematic, interdiscipli- nary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmen- tal design arts in planning and decision-making which may have an impact on man's environment." In the California Act the Legislature declared that it is the policy of the State to: "Develop and maintain a high quality environment now and in the future, and take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance environmental quality of the State" and to "require governmental agencies at all levels to de- velop standards and procedures necessary to protect environmental quality." Both State and Federal legislation requires that before any work gets under way on any of many various kinds of projects, reports be prepared which show how the total environment will be affected by construction activities and what long-term effect the completed project will have. Alternative proposals must be examined likewise, as will a "no build" approach. These documents are circulated for re- view and critical comment to a "very wide variety of organizations both public and private." CNPS Role in Protecting Plants I suppose the "Pine Hill Disaster"—the destruc- tion of Fremontodendron decumbens in its type lo- cality in Eldorado County, described by Roman Gan- kin in the Newsletter of the California Native Plant Society, August 1969—prompted then CNPS Presi- dent Ledyard Stebbins to ask for an opportunity for CNPS to review environmental reports on proposed road and highway construction projects in Califor- nia. This would afford us an opportunity to detemine if the native flora were taken fully into account in the reports. Further, if rare or endangered plant species or communities of plant life of unusual significance were threatened by highway construction, CNPS might in such a case be able to prevent irreparable damage. Unquestionably, both the National and State acts are aimed in the right direction and motives are of the highest order. However, there is a joker in the deck. That joker is a lack of knowledge. It must be recog- nized that such legislation demands a whole new concept in planning, and for many segments of en- vironmental significance no data are available to agency planners on which sound judgments can be based. The California Native Plant Society can help fill knowledge gaps by providing information about plant life in project construction areas. When CNPS first undertook environment report review, two CNPS officers, Alice Howard and Law- rence Heckard of the Jepson Herbarium, took on the task. Fairly early it became apparent that the work load was too great for them to handle in addition to their regular jobs and their unstinting services in other ways to CNPS. During this period, both State and Federal highway organizations had put CNPS on the "mandatory list." This meant CNPS would receive environmental reports on every highway construction (including maintenance) project in California. Other Agencies Involved As it has developed, we have also occasionally received environmental reports from agencies other than the Division of Highways. Various local irriga- tion districts, county road departments, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the Navy, and others have sent material for review from time to time. In December 1971,1 agreed to take on the task of reviewing highway environmental reports as chair- man of the Highway Impact Committee. I could screen all reports, but obviously I could not provide definitive information in all cases. I received great help from the late Ernest Twisselmann, Cholame; George Dobbins, Sacramento; Frank Vasek, River- side; Mitch Beauchamp, San Diego; Dean Taylor, Ledyard Stebbins, and Robert Powell, Davis; Law- rence Heckard, Berkeley; Richard Hildreth, Saratoga; Dave Verity, Los Angeles; Kingsley R. Stern, Chico; Gordon True, San Rafael; and Wesley E. Reinhardt, Eureka. Some Examples What are some kinds of things we have dealt with? Here are a few examples of small but important ways that CNPS has had an effect: A section of a state route in northern San Benito County was scheduled for realignment and recon- struction. The Environmental Impact Statement failed to note the presence of a rather rare form of Clarkia. Construction work would destroy most, and perhaps all, plants in the construction zone. The District Highway Engineer was cooperative and ex- pressed a desire to use the Clarkia in landscaping after construction was complete. Since commercial seed sources do not stock this species, a CNPS member collected seeds and supplied them to the Highway District where they will be grown for seed 20 increase. When the construction work is completed, the Clarkia will be reestablished as part of the land- scape design. In southern California, freeway construction threatened one of the few remaining colonies of Opuntia serpentina, a rare and endangered species. Mitch Beauchamp of CNPS instigated salvage oper- ations by local cactus and succulent societies. Sargent Cypress Saved A proposed freeway near Grass Valley appeared to threaten some important botanical features. The District Highway Engineer appealed to CNPS for help in an on-the-ground survey. Gordon True of CNPS traversed the proposed route with technical personnel of the Highway District in a botanical sur- vey. The routing now adopted will avoid endanger- ing a grove of Cupressus sargentii. Landscape plans for a roadside rest on Route 395 in Inyo County follow the general recommendations of CNPS that indigenous plants be used. Ernest Twisselmann's strong statement of general scenic values and specific floristic features was in- fluential in the designation of a Scenic Highway in Kern and Inyo Counties. At the outset, I found that most reports were final drafts that had already been approved. It seemed that reviewing statements that had already received the go-ahead was akin to beating a dead horse. How- ever, each one was carefully read and where critical comment on the effects a project would have on native flora was justified, it was made. If a project endangered no native flora or damage was of minimal consequence, we said so. Our scrutiny of the approved drafts apparently had an effect on those who prepared the initial reports, because we began to receive preliminary drafts so that our contributions could be included in the final versions that were submitted for approval. Some- times we received requests for botanical assistance in the initial stages of report preparation. There was and is no uniformity as to the way the various high- way districts handle the problem. Some do it one way, others another. New Organizational Set-Up In July 1973 the State undertook reorganization measures that removed the Division of Highways from the Department of Public Works and placed it in the Department of Transportation in the newly created Business and Transportation Agency. The Department of Transportation now is comprised of six divisions, two of which are of principal concern to CNPS: the Division of Transportation Planning and the Division of Highways. The new organiza- tional set-up has been undergoing growing pains. As I write this, the Division of Transportation Planning is developing the California Transportation Plan which "involves all levels of Government and the private sector in a cooperative process to develop coordinated transportation plans." The plan will in- clude specific detailed procedures for development of environmental impact information and documen- tation. When that plan is finally completed we should expect some uniformity of procedure throughout the state. But don't hold your breath. The first version is not due until January 1976. Somewhat prior to the establishment of the State Business and Transportation Agency, I became con- vinced our mode of operation was wrong. Too much time elapsed between receipt of a report from a highway district, acquisition of appropriate informa- tion from other committee members, and transmis- sion of that information to the originating highway district. Further, the amount of time required to handle the operation became excessive. It seemed that CNPS could better serve if project review were decentralized. At about that same time, CNPS President John Sawyer felt that CNPS should have a definite policy for our role in reviewing environmental reports. Such a policy statement would delineate our objec- tives and responsibilities and set up guide lines and procedures that would enable fulfillment of those responsibilities. A draft statement of policy and mode of implementation was adopted unanimously by the CNPS Board of Directors at its meeting on September 15, 1973. A Key Role for Chapters Accordingly, environmental impact reports from the various agencies are now sent to an Environmen- tal Impact Coordinator appointed by the CNPS Pres- ident. The coordinator forwards the reports, after scrutiny, to the CNPS chapter in whose geographical area the proposed project falls. There the report is critically reviewed. Any comment needed is sent directly by the chapter to the originating agency. The system has several advantages: First, the ac- tion agencies have one person to whom all reports are sent. The time lag for report review and comment is greatly reduced. CNPS chapters can be certain that their local interests are being properly looked after, and last but not least, the work load of project review and comment is more equably distributed over the state. 21 CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY POLICY ON ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS One of the primary functions of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) is the preservation of our state's native flora. To this end it is vital that CNPS active! y participate in the governmen- tal procedures which determine the modification of California's landscape and flora. A significant step in the present procedures involves the creation and review of Environmental Impact State- ments (EIS). It is critical for the Society to be involved in the evaluation of these statements. The Board of Directors has adopted the following guidelines to assist chapters and individuals of the Society in participating in these procedures. I. The California Native Plant Society will evaluate First Draft Environmental Impact Statements to determine that the EIS: •Accurately reflects the existing plant cover within the project area. • Notes the presence or absence of rare or endangered species. • States procedures to minimize destruction of plant resources. • Where feasible, proposes re-establishment of plant cover to maintain aesthetic values and provide site stability. 1. If rare or unusual plants are threatened by project con- struction and this cannot be avoided by selection of alterna- tive routes or locations, CNPS should recommend that sal- vage operations (plants, cuttings, or seeds) be undertaken. 2. CNPS may, and often should, offer suggestions for use of native plants in the landscaping of construction projects. It is not the function of CNPS to suggest individual species for each EIS. Recommendations should instead be carefully phrased to conform to the following principles: a. Trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants should be used which are indigenous to the general project area. b. If non-indigenous natives are desired for purposes of form, floral characteristics or function (ground covers, etc.), species selected should be those which are unlikely to hybridize with local flora, in order to preserve the integrity of the gene pool of local native species. c. Suggestions for use of exotic plants should be avoided. Where aggressive exotics could threaten native flora, this fact should be made of record. II. CNPS will not be involved officially or unofficially in re- search for or writing of EIS for any agency. A. If an agency requests technical expertise from CNPS prior to preparation of a Draft EIS to determine whether unusual floristic characteristics or rare or endangered plant species occur within a project area, and if an on-the-ground survey or other research would be required to furnish this information, CNPS should limit its participation to furnishing names of qual- ified botanical consultants within the general geographic area of the project. The agency should make its own selection of the In these days of the energy crisis one hears great wailing and gnashing of teeth from environmen- talists. "All is lost!" they cry, but this is not true. The legislation is still on the books, and its provisions must be adhered to or the law changed. Environment-oriented people may find it tougher to marshall convincing arguments, but on the contrary, they may find a brighter side. For three decades or specific consultant and be prepared to provide payment for expert botanical consulting service. Consultant fees should be a matter for settlement between the consultant and the agency, and CNPS should avoid involvement in these monetary mat- ters. III. CNPS should receive for review and further comment the Final Environmental Impact Statements. IMPLEMENTATION I. The President of CNPS shall appoint a member of the Society to serve as the Society's Environmental Impact Coordinator (EIC). II. The functions of the Environmental Impact Coordinator are as follows: 1. Receive all drafts of EIS or requests for assistance prior to preparation of an EIS from originating agencies. 2. Forward such material to the geographically appropriate CNPS chapter for action. 3. Notify the originating agency as to where the EIS has been sent for review. 4. Forward notices of public hearings to the appropriate CNPS chapter, but do not ad vise the originating agency of such forwarding action. 5. The EIC will not be required to follow up to see that CNPS chapters are fulfilling their responsibilities with respect to EIS. III. The EIC should be provided with a budget to cover minor and routine expenses necessary to discharge his responsibilities. Periodically he should submit a list of his expenditures approp- riately supported by receipts to the State Treasurer of CNPS for reimbursement. Large expenditures (say in excess of $50) would require prior approval by the State Board of Directors. IV. The functions of the local chapters are as follows: 1. The Chapter President or chairman of the local EIS Com- mittee should review or select reviewers (preferably members of CNPS) with a view to avoiding conflict of interest. 2. Reviewers of EIS should prepare their evaluations as promptly as possible and send them directly to the originating agencies. If an EIS is of no consequence to CNPS, the originat- ing agency should be so advised. 3. Notification of public hearings by the EIC does not require action by local chapters. Local chapters may or may not attend or contribute to public hearings, as local decisions dictate. more we have been predicting dire consequences from the plunder of our resources. Perhaps we should not say,' 'I told you so," but certainly we can emphasize that shortages of today are due in large part to tactical shortcomings of yesterday. Strategy now dictates that, more than ever before, we insist that the total environment be carefully guarded lest even greater calamities befall. 22 PINK CURRANTS ARE NOT RED CURRANTS by James Roof It is gratifying to note that increasing numbers of native plant buffs are referring to pink currant as Ribes glutinosum, rather than as/?, sanguineum var. glutinosum. At the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, where we have grown both the pink and the red flowering currants for over twenty years, we have conducted a mild campaign for recognition of the two as separate species—R. glutinosum and R. san- guineum. Ribes glutinosum, the pink currant, occurs along or near the coast, from San Luis Obispo County to Del Norte County, with its northern limit at the Smith River. It is evidently endemic to California, not having been reported in southern Oregon. Its upper altitudinal limit is given as 2000 feet. Although it inhabits damp, humusy swales near the sea, it is seldom exposed to sea winds, preferring woodland openings or the softly chaparraled sides of sheltered ravines. It took me a long time to clear up my own confu- sion about the two currants, which was implanted in my mind in my junior plant-collecting days by a statement in McMinn's Illustrated Manual of California Shrubs (1939), that Ribes sanguineum is to be found in "... Marin and Santa Clara Counties; probably in San Luis Obispo County. In the southern part of its range it is often with difficulty disting- uished from the variety glutinosum.'' That statement led me to believe that I would one day come across the red flowering currant somewhere near sea level. McMinn's statement turned out, however, to be mis- information, based on the sparseness of information at the time on California locations of/?. sanguineum. Nevertheless the search for the true R. sanguineum along the coast led me to keep an eye out for deep pink currants. Whenever we sighted a currant with startling pink instead of pale pink flow- ers we would stop for a closer inspection. It always turned out to be/?, glutinosum, but, as a result of the quest, the Regional Parks Botanic Garden has the best flowering forms of the species ever to be col- lected. Some of the finest forms with the largest blooms were found along the Noyo River, a mile south of Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County. Never having seen Ribes sanguineum in the wild or having talked to anyone who had seen it, I at last Fremontia is indebted to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden of the East Bay Regional Park District for making possible this contribu- tion by Mr. Roof. turned to the University of California Herbarium. There, while scrutinizing dozens of collections of Ribes glutinosum (with Dr. Rimo Bacigalupi flipping the sheets), I came upon a pressing of /?. san- guineum. It was so different from/?, glutinosum that I knew its identity before reading the label, which gave its source as 5.6 miles west of Etna, Siskiyou County. The specimen had been collected by Rox- ana Ferris of Stanford University. During a field trip to Siskiyou County in June 1949, we went to Etna, then proceeded west by south up along Etna Creek. At exactly 5.6 miles we stopped and examined our surroundings. We were in a forest of ponderosa pine and white fir, high on the grade between Etna and the headwaters of the Salmon River. The elevation there is close to 5000 feet. The site seemed unpromising for currants, and as we debated procedure, someone pointed up the steep slope to the north to a blob of red against the forest duff. "A snow plant," someone said. "Sarcodes sanguinea." We climbed the slope for a closer look at the "snow plant." It was a Ribes sanguineum in full bloom. Roxana Ferris' mileage reading had been precise. Her currant colony numbered a dozen ma- ture plants and five bouncing youngsters. We dug and canned three of the latter. In 1952 one of the plants was set out in the botanic garden. Though slow to grow, it has proved (along with its progeny) to be a very unfussy garden subject. Ribes sanguineum, a prolific bloomer, is the loveliest native member of its family and an excep- tional spring accent shrub. From a few paces distant its flowers are easily mistaken for small roses, and they do resemble the popular dwarf rose known as 'Tom Thumb'. The blooms are a vivid rose that verges on red. Their color is so intense that this species has earned the common names of red- flowering currant, blood currant, and coral currant. A well-sited Ribes sanguineum in cultivation at- tains full size at about two and one-half feet tall and two feet wide. It is a slow-growing, dainty shrub, small enough to be a prized rock garden plant, where /?. glutinosum is not. Slenderly branched, it keeps a compact shape. Its flower buds are pendant, but as they begin to open the curved peduncles slowly straighten and the flowers rise to an upright position. At full bloom the racemes are vertical with their topmost flowers facing upward. The flowering times of Ribes sanguineum and/?. glutinosum are at wide variance. The coastal /?. 23 glutinosum is one of the year's earliest bloomers, commencing its show period around February 1, when flowers and furled, fragrant new leaves appear together. It is in full bloom between February 15 and March 14. In some years it is in fruit on March 30, with a few late blossoms remaining on the shrubs. Red Flowering Currant Pink Currant (Ribes sanguineum) (Ribes glutinosum) The blooming time of Ribes sanguineum is almost two months after that of R. glutinosum. As the latter species nears the end of its flower show on March 30, shrubs of R. sanguineum are usually still leafless. They generally commence budding out just prior to April 1, with full bloom occurring around April 10. The two species, at least in their California manifes- tations, could produce hybrid progeny only by the slimmest of chances. Their widely disparate ranges render it highly improbable that any mid-forms be- tween the species will ever be found in nature. Ribes sanguineum occupies an inland, montane habitat, achieving altitudes of close to 6000 feet and seldom occurring (in California) below 2000 feet. R. glutinosum occupies a coastal habitat, usually below 1500 feet. In California/?, sanguineum ranges in its highland distribution from northern Lake County to Del Norte and Siskiyou Counties. Beyond California it is found as far to the north as British Columbia. R. glutinosum is found only in California, along the seaboard from Del North County southward to San Luis Obispo County. The ranges of the two species appear to be totally disjunct, with no known sym- patry thus far reported. The principal differences between these two cur- rants are too pronounced to be casually dismissed. Ribes sanguineum is a slow-growing, small, and del- Drawings reprinted from Leroy Abrams, Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States, Vol. II, with the permission of Stanford University Press. icately formed shrub; R. glutinosum is a fast- growing, robust shrub that matures at from eight to ten feet tall, and as wide. The mature leaves of/?. sanguineum are only two-thirds the size of those of R. glutinosum. The upper surfaces of the leaves of/?. sanguineum are dark green; the undersides are densely tomentose and distinguished by thick whitish veins. The leaves of/?, glutinosum are pale green on their upper surfaces; the lower surfaces are green-veined and thinly tomentose. The rose to red blooms of/?, sanguineum are borne upright; the pink blooms of/?, glutinosum are pendant. Two California botanists share the view that these are two distinct species. Both Ribes glutinosum and /?. sanguineum are accorded specific status by Dr. Leroy Abrams in the Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States (1944). Likewise Dr. Robert Hoover in his The Vascular Plants of San Luis Obispo County (1970) gives the name/?, glutinosum Benth. for the pink-flowered species. Cuttings of Ribes sanguineum are best made in April, just as the new leaves are unfurling. Such material strikes root so readily that the species should be much more widely grown than it is. Our plants are so slow to grow, however, so perfectly balanced in habit, and so floriferous in character that it is difficult to take any large number of cuttings from them. New plants are in such demand that there are never enough of them to go around. Provided it is given a foot or so of sharp drainage, Ribes sanguineum thrives in ordinary garden soils. In the Bay Area it should be grown in a raised soil bed near a tree or other shelter that gives it two or three hours of mid-day shade, with full sun the rest of the day. In the wild it enjoys a four-month summer sea- son of warm, filtered sun in pineland situations, and will therefore tolerate more direct, even hot, sunlight than one might suspect. Though it will survive and bloom in heavily shaded situations (exposed to an hour or less of daily sun) it is distinctly unhappy and spindly in prolonged daily shade. Plants of the red flowering currant should be wa- tered every two weeks during the warmest stretch of summer, but they can tolerate considerable dryness, and overwatering can most assuredly kill a speci- men, as we once discovered. Yellowing of the leaves in early autumn is not an indication of dryness but of early dormancy. If, through autumn, a specimen re- tains a few yellowish leaves and its buds are fat, it is happy and needs little, if any, water. As for the big coastal species, so fragrant-leaved, so pinkly attractive in its own manner, our garden shrubs have shown marked increase in attractive- ness and have flowered much more profusely since we labeled them with their proper name—Ribes glutinosum! THE INSECT EATER by Donald W. Dimock The cobra-like structure is the amazingly adapted leaf of the darlingtonia or pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica), one of California's most distinctive na- tive plants. The petiole is a hollow tube, lined with down-pointing hairs and partially filled with diges- tive juices—a fatal trap for insects. Lured by the nectar and the aroma of the plant, insects crawl up through the opening on the under- side of the hood. The spots on the hood are translu- cent windows toward which the insect crawls, seek- ing a way out. This path, however, takes him away from the real opening, which is relatively dark since itfaces down on the bog below. Eventually the insect tires, and slips down onto the down-pointing hairs against which there is no return. He ends up in the bottom to become food for the plant. The hooded leaves grow in a clump. They are yellow-green in color and from twelve to thirty in- ches tall. The flowers, which have dark purple pet- als, are borne singly on stalks which rise above the leaves. Darlingtonias grow in boggy places, sometimes in great masses, in the redwood, fir, or pine forests of northern California and southern Oregon, at al- titudes up to 6000 feet. Darlingtonia californica is the only species of this genus, which belongs to the Sarraceniaceae, the Pitcher Plant family. (Photo- graphs by the author.) 25 NATIVES FOR YOUR GARDEN by Marjorie G. Schmidt Baneberry (Actaea rubra subsp. arguta) Family: Crowfoot (Ranunculaceae) Habit: Large perennial with several stems, Wi to 3 feet, growing from a rangy rootstock. Foliage: The leaves are large, compound, light green, and tri-ternately divided, the leaflets are serrate on the margins, the tip ones as much as 2Vz inches in length. The stems emerge in early spring with the leaves curled in, much like many of the ferns. Flowers: Congested, terminal racemes of tiny, ivory-white flowers, in early spring. Sepals and pet- als are small, but numerous stamens give a plume- like effect. Fruit: An upright spike of oval, bright red berries in late summer, often persisting in autumn. The berries, which contain lens-shaped seeds, are considered to be poisonous. Culture: This shade-loving perennial is not yet widely used in gardens in the west, but it is easy to grow, and permanent once it is established. Seed may be planted in deep flats or pots, put in a cold frame, or left outdoors for the winter and will germi- nate in the following spring. Young plants can be transplanted to three-inch pots into a friable soil mix containing some natural leaf mold, and held for the first year. Young plants produce the characteristic leaves but remain only a few inches high during the first two years. Plants begin to flower and set fruit by the third year. (Frequently when the east and west have genera and species in common, I consult an eastern wild flower book such as Wild Flowers and How To Grow Them, by Edwin F. Steffek (1954). From this book I learn that my own findings have been corroborated, and that Mr. Steffek considers this a worthy garden plant and permanent in the cultivated border. He says that baneberries may also be propagated by root division, and that plants prefer a slightly acid soil.) Estimate of Garden Value: There are few native pe- rennials more valuable than baneberry for a shady situation. In my Los Gatos garden a large plant per- sisted for more than twelve years under the live oak, unfurling its leaves promptly every February, and producing several spikes of bright red berries. Here in my mountain garden plants have performed equally well, with volunteer seedlings around the established plants. They are accompanied by colum- bines, assorted wild iris, and various campanulas in a shady nook. Other plants with which the baneberry might be used include cyclamen, epimedium, meadow-rue, lilies, and azaleas. Although baneberry dies down in early autumn, its foliage in a watered border remains presentable until about October and thereafter may be cut to the ground. This ferny na- tive may be used to enhance a natural as well as cultivated area, among shrubs, under trees, or on a shady slope. Baneberry (Actaea rubra subsp. arguta) Plant print by Ida Geary Distribution: Baneberry is widely distributed, grow- ing on wooded, brushy hills and slopes, generally in humusy soil which remains moist for most of the year. It is almost always part of heavy thickets in- cluding blackberry (Rubus sp.), snowberry (Symphoricarpos sp.), serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.), and species ofThalictrum, among others. It is native throughout the Coast Ranges, up to 3000 feet elevation, and in the Sierra Nevada from Tulare County southward, up to 8000 feet. 26 FOR TAHOE VISITORS, A VALUABLE NEW FLORA A Book Review by Gordon H. True A FLORA OF THE TAHOE BASIN AND NEIGH- BORING AREAS, by Gladys L. Smith. 231 pp., 28 illus., 4 double-page maps. Published by the Univer- sity of San Francisco in The Wasmann Journal of Biology, Spring, 1973. Reprints with paperback cover available from the author, 730 28th Ave., San Francisco 94121. $5.85 including tax and mailing. This floristic study of an important part of the Sierra Nevada, first conceived in the summer of 1959, was restricted at that time to Echo Summit and the Desolation Wilderness. Gladys Smith was spur- red on, however, by the perennial desire of the bo- tanical explorer to learn what grows on the other side of the hill, and the scope was eventually enlarged to encompass not only the entire Tahoe basin, but a substantial area in the American River watershed and small "neighboring areas" in the Carson River and Truckee River drainings. Collections were made by the author each year from 1959 to 1972; intens ively in the summers of 1964 to 1966 and 1970 to 1972, and sporadically in the other years. Generally, most collecting was confined to habitats above the 6400 foot contour. Little or no collecting was done in that part of the basin referred to as the "eastern shore," including Mt. Rose. This is unfortunate since intensive collecting on the Nevada side of the lake would undoubtedly have been immensely rewarding. Winnemucca Lake in Carson Pass area The introduction is well illustrated by a number of carefully selected black and white photographs, all by the author with the exception of one aerial view. Four maps, adapted from U.S. Geological Survey sheets, illustrate the salient features of the study area. Only the 7200,8000, and 8200 foot contours are shown. In addition to delineating the scope of the study, the introduction contains descriptions of physiographic and geologic features, a discussion of plant communities and a floristic analysis. At the conclusion of the latter there are two interesting lists. One, admittedly incomplete, provides a list of the plants growing on the summits of five or more peaks on either side of the Sierran crest. Further explora- tion should add more names to this list of mostly subalpine plants. Another brief but intriguing depar- ture from the ordinary floristic analysis names the kinds of plants (twenty-one) found mostly on vol- canics only at the north end of the Tahoe basin and those (four) found only at the south end, mostly in habitats underlain by granite. The final section of the introduction is a good, detailed, historical account of botanical explorations in the Tahoe basin and its environs. It begins with the John C. Fremont expedition of 1844, the collections of William H. Brewer in the years 1860 to 1864 and so on through the golden years of botanical exploration of the early 1900s up to the present. The author, commenting on the unusually large number of collec- tors who have visited the Tahoe basin over the years, points out that "Lake Tahoe with its great beauty and superb surroundings drew botanists as it did everyone else." Even though many came as vac- ationers they also collected plants. Altogether they did a thorough job, and this is reflected in the mass of material preserved in the major herbaria of the San Francisco Bay area and elsewhere. Enlivened by Notes The catalogue is painstakingly annotated and the ample habitat notes and citations are enlivened by personal reminiscences, historical anecdotes, and remarks concerning the poisonous, medicinal, or other properties of certain plants. The total number of taxa in the catalogue is 1,161 (903 species and 258 subspecies, varieties, and hybrids) in 307 genera and Photographs by Gladys Smith, from the book 27 BOOKS RECEIVED -£>¦"- ' ' Hope Valley from Luther Pass Corn Lily (yeratrum californicum) 11 families. There are 117 California endemics, 78 of which are found only in the Sierra Nevada of California and neighboring Nevada. Three taxa are listed as Tahoe basin endemics: Rorippa subumbel- lata, Draba stenoloba var. ramosa, and Draba as- terophera var. macrocarpa. A fourth species, Penstemon lemmonii, is considered to be restricted to El Dorado and Placer counties of the Tahoe basin, but its range should be extended to include Nevada County where several collections have been made in recent years. This flora fills a real need and is a welcome addi- tion to the increasing roster of local floras. The au- thor is to be congratulated on an unusually fine job. Visitors to the Tahoe basin, even those having only an elementary interest in the plants of that beautiful land, will find this volume to be a valued companion. THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOREST TREES IN CALIFORNIA, by James R. Griffin and William B. Critchfield. USDA Forest Service Research Paper PSW-82. 1972. 114 pages. 93 maps. $1.75 from Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. 20402. Descriptive notes and distribution maps of 86 native forest and woodland trees of California. FLORA OF THE NORTHWEST, An Illustrated Manual, by C. Leo Hitchcock and Arthur Cronquist. Illustrated by Jeanne R. Janish. 705 pages. Univer- sity of Washington Press, Seattle. 1973. $25. A one- volume condensation of the five-volume Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. Over 10,000 illustra- tions. MORE DUNE TANSY Since Elizabeth McClintock wrote about the rare and endangered dune tansy (Tanacetum camphoratum) in Fremontia in October 1973, an extensive colony has been found at Dillon Beach in Marin County. The plants are growing in the dunes immediately to the east of the road to Lawson's Landing. Some may be found also at the top of Little Sugar Loaf (elevation 380 feet), the dominant dune in the area and a favorite now among the hang-glider set. Dr. McClintock, whose personalized license plates bear the letters TANSY, visited the area re- cently and was pleased to find the tansy alive and well in Marin County. —Robert C. West NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Joyce Burr is one of the founders of CNPS and chairs the Chapter Affairs Committee. Donald W. Dimock is the author of Flowers by the Trailside. He is retired from business and lives in Walnut Creek. Claire Etienne is employed in the botany department at the California Academy of Sciences while working toward a master's degree in botany at San Francisco State University. Anne Galloway is a founding member and former president of the San Diego Chapter of CNPS. James R. Griffin is a plant ecologist at the Hastings Natural History Reservation in Carmel Valley. A forester by background, Dr. Griffin's big project in recent years has been compiling an atlas of California tree distribution which was published in 1972 by the U.S. Forest Service. Alice Howard, a long-time board member and officer of CNPS, edits the Society's Bulletin. James Roof, director of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, has been an active leader of CNPS since its inception. He edits The Four Seasons published by the Botanic Garden, which is located in Berkeley. John Sawyer, president of CNPS, is associate pro- fessor of botany at California State University, Humboldt. Marjorie Schmidt has been studying California na- tive plants, in the wild and in cultivation, most of her adult life. She is the author of numerous articles in horticultural magazines and gives many slide lec- tures. Joyce Stevens is an architect and lives in Carmel. She says, "I am an active conservationist but not even an amateur botanist—just very interested in preserving what's left." Ken Taylor, CNPS' Environmental Impact Coor- dinator, has been a professor of botany and a fores- ter. He now operates a nursery at Aromas specializ- ing in western trees and shrubs and bonsai material. Gordon H. True, an associate in the botany depart- ment at the California Academy of Sciences, is work- ing on a flora of Nevada County. Robert C. West is a practicing physician whose hobby is the flora of Marin County, where he lives. This spring he is scheduled to give a course in plant families and communities at the College of Marin. Our Artists Ida Geary lives in Mill Valley and teaches a class in plant printing at the San Francisco Community Col- lege Center. Her prints have appeared in two vol- umes, Marin Trails, and The Leaf Book. Diana Gregory attended the University of Texas and did graduate work at San Francisco Art Institute. She is now traveling in Costa Rica.