Category Archives: Plant Identification

Plants of the Bodie Hills, 2024 Edition

Posted on January 28, 2024 | 3 comments

Update, March 13, 2024: I’ve corrected a bunch of typos and other minor errors in the January 2024 edition, and have replaced it with a new, updated and corrected March 2024 edition, at the same link on the Downloads page. There you will also find a new, short (9 pages), simple Checklist (without lengthy keys and annotations) as a quick reference for printing or to load onto your smartphone.

Plants of the Bodie Hills, 2024 Edition, is now available on the Downloads page (a free PDF). As in previous years, the new edition contains additions, corrections, nomenclatural updates, and refinements to the keys. A key to families of Dicots (Magnoliopsida) in the area has at long last been added. Several place names, road names, and boundaries have been added to the map on the back cover (last page of the PDF).

The total number of “minimum rank” vascular plant taxa documented to occur in the Bodie Hills now stands at 727, in 80 families. Another 96 taxa, including 2 additional dicot families, are still considered to be potentially present, but not yet confirmed by collections or observations within the Bodie Hills.

Below Travertine Hot Springs

New additions to the 2024 edition (found during 2023) are:

  • Lupinus uncialis (Lilliput lupine) at the Bodie Hills Preserve and at Travertine Hot Springs,
  • Micromonolepis pusilla (Dwarf monolepis) at Mormon Meadow,
  • Phacelia curvipes (Washoe phacelia) in the southwestern Bodie Hills,
  • Platanthera tescamnis (Great Basin bog orchid) at a remote spring in the northeastern Bodie Hills in Mineral County, and
  • Saponaria officinalis (Common soapwort) at Conway Summit.

Plants seen in 2023 that had been expected in the Bodie Hills or not seen here for decades were:

  • Antirrhinum (Sairocarpus) kingii (King’s snapdragon) at Travertine Hot Springs,
  • Collomia grandiflora (Large-flowered collomia) near Mormon Meadow,
  • Eriogonum hookeri (Hooker’s buckwheat) at Travertine Hot Springs,
  • Erythranthe rubella (Little redstem monkeyflower) at “Sage Flat,” (near the Little Bodie Mine historical marker),
  • Malacothrix glabrata (Desert dandelion) in Red Creek Wash (from a 1983 collection),
  • Penstemon deustus (Hot rock penstemon) north of Bridgeport Reservoir Dam, and
  • Silene nuda (Sticky catchfly) along Cow Camp Road.

Nearly all of these were found, not by me, but by others posting their observations to iNaturalist (thanks to all who do this!). All observations within the Bodie Hills on iNaturalist can be seen HERE.

Jeffrey and Lodgepole pines in the western Bodie Hills

As before, you have two options for how to use this document: 1) load the PDF onto a mobile device or 2) print the PDF yourself.

  • Using a mobile device: I’ve found the PDF to be quite readable on my iPhone (in the Books app), although it helps that I’m near-sighted. It’s even easier to read on an iPad, other tablet, or laptop.
  • Printing the PDF: You can print the PDF yourself or at a local print shop. I highly recommend printing the 128 pages 2-sided to conserve paper and to reduce bulk and weight in the field. A comb or spiral binding, binder clip, or other binding will hold it together.

Your additions, corrections, comments, or questions are always welcome.

Cliffs above Bodie Creek at the state line

Copyright © Tim Messick 2024. All rights reserved.

3 Comments

Posted in Bodie Hills, Botany, Plant Identification

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Psathyrotes, Psathyrotopsis, and Trichoptilium (Oh, My!)

Posted on January 14, 2024 | 2 comments

Recently I found myself looking closely at keys, descriptions, and photos of Psathyrotes annua (Annual turtleback) and P. ramosissima (“regular” Turtleback)—both rayless members of the Sunflower family, Asteraceae—to clear up some lingering uncertainty over how to distinguish the two. Then one taxon led to another and it became a larger project.

Psatyrotes annua is familiar to many who have wandered the perimeter of Mono Lake. It thrives in the sparsely vegetated sands and gravelly pumice of Mono’s prehistoric and post-1945 receding shorelines. It’s often misidentified as P. ramosissima, which so far, has probably not been found in the Mono Basin, but is common in the Mojave, Colorado, and western Sonoran Deserts. These two can be distinguished as follows:

  • Leaf blades generally clearly divided by deeply-set, anastomosing (cross-connecting) veins into irregular, ovate to polygonal areas (suggesting the segmented “scutes” of a turtle’s carapace); outer phyllaries ± wide, spatulate to obovate, widely spreading to reflexed; florets 21–26 (16–32) per head; pappus of 120–140 bristles in 3–4 series …… Psathyrotes ramosissima
  • Leaf blades generally weakly or not at all divided by veins into scute-like areas; outer phyllaries ± narrow, mostly lance-linear, ± erect to spreading; florets 13–16 (10–20) per head; pappus of 35–50 bristles in one series …… Psathyrotes annua
Psathyrotes ramosissima
Left: © Chloe & Trevor Van Loon/iNaturalist, Right: © Tom Chester/iNaturalist
Psathyrotes annua
Left: © Tim Messick/iNaturalist, Right: © Jim Morefield/iNaturalist

Exploring this small genus further, one finds there are currently three species in Psathyrotes, another close relative formerly in Psathyrotes now banished to Trichoptilium—a monotypic (one species) genus—and three more close relatives housed in Psathyrotopsis, a newer genus carved out of Psathyrotes.

Apparently no single key has been crafted that includes all 7 species of Psathyrotes, Trichoptilium, and Psathyrotopsis. The Jepson eFlora includes two Psathyrotes and the Trichoptilium. The Flora of North America (FNA) includes all three Psathyrotes, the Trichoptilium and one species of Psathyrotopsis, but not the other two, which appear to be narrow endemics in southern Coahuila, Mexico. Both Jepson and FNA make you work through ponderous keys for the entire sunflower family to distinguish these three genera. A paper on “Taxonomy of Psathyrotes” (Strother and Pilz 1975) includes a key to all of the taxa included in FNA, but not the third Psathyrotopsis, because it was described later (Turner 1993).

So, why not write a straightforward key that includes all seven taxa? Not so simple, it turns out, because existing keys don’t all use the same set of characters, and that newest species endemic to southern Coahuila (Psathyrotopsis hintoniorum) has never been included in a key with its relatives—and the paper describing it refers the reader to the formal description in Latin to figure out what distinguishes it from Psathyrotopsis purpusii. Thank goodness for Google Translate!

Below is an image of my key. (The very limited text formatting abilities in this WordPress blog don’t lend themselves to an indented key longer than 1 or 2 couplets.) The key is adapted from Baldwin 2012, Strother 2006a, Strother 2006b, Strother and Pilz 1975, and Turner 1973 (citations below). It has been modified from the originals by adding species, changing some terminology, rearranging some couplets, and adding some character states.

Here are photos of the rest of the species in Psathyrotes, Psathyrotopsis, and Trichoptilium (thank you to the iNaturalist contributors who allow their images to be used non-commercially!)

Psathyrotes pilifera Both: © slothiker/iNaturalist
Psathyrotyopsis hintoniorum
Left: © Arizona State University, Right: © New York Botanical Garden
(both are duplicate sheets of Guy Nesom 7648)
Psathyrotopsis purpusii Both: © José G. Flores Ventura/iNaturalist
Psathyrotopsis scaposa
Left: © Matt Reala/iNaturalist, Right: © Joey Santore/iNaturalist
Trichoptilium incisum
Left: © Jessica Irwin/iNaturalist, Right: © Irene/iNaturalist

And here are maps showing the known distribution of each species, produced (by me) using QGIS and Adobe Illustrator, based on occurrence data (the dots) from specimen locations served by the SEINet Portal Network and “Research Grade” observations from iNaturalist (note: some dots could be mismapped or misidentifications). Colored shading shows the approximate generalized distribution of each taxon.

References:
Baldwin, Bruce G. 2012. adapted from Strother (2006), Psathyrotes, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=571, accessed on November 28, 2022.
Strother, John L., 2006a. Psathyrotes in Flora of North America 21:416–418 (http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=126897), accessed on November 28, 2022
Strother, John L., 2006b. Psathyrotopsis in Flora of North America 21:364–365 (http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=126898), accessed on November 28, 2022.
Strother, John L and George Pilz. 1975. “TAXONOMY OF PSATHYROTES (COMPOSITAE: SENECIONEAE).” Madroño; a West American journal of botany 23, 24–40. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/partpdf/169365
Turner, B. L. 1993. “A new species of Psathyrotopsis (Asteraceae, Helenieae) from Coahuila, México.” Phytologia 75, 143–146. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.17305.

Copyright © Tim Messick 2024. All rights reserved.

2 Comments

Posted in Bodie Hills, Botany, Mono Basin, Plant Identification

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Mystery Plants in the Bodie Hills

Posted on April 11, 2023 | 4 comments

I need your help—those of you who live somewhat close to the Bodie Hills. Three plants have yet to be identified there because they have not been seen up close, photographed clearly, or observed under the right conditions for identification. Since my home is a nearly 5-hour drive from their locations, I don’t know when I might be in the right places at the right times to identify these plants. So, I invite anyone who is interested to do a bit of “citizen science” botanical field work and post the observations on iNaturalist. Details follow.

Mystery Plant #1: An Aphyllon Near Aurora

This plant has been observed twice, in June 2021 and April 2022 at the base of a road cut along the road to Aurora (Mineral County, Nevada), about 0.85 mile south of the intersection with the road through Del Monte Canyon to Bodie (elevation about 6,400 feet). Both times the plants were well past flowering, dried out and crumbling to the point where critical features for identifying the species were no longer present.

When might these plants be in fresh, identifiable condition? Similar plants have been observed in Adobe Valley southeast of Mono Lake (Mono County, CA)(elevation about 6,500 feet). Plants in that area appear to have been in good condition during July. The plants in the photos above had probably flowered during the previous summer.

This plant is clearly in the genus Aphyllon (Broomrapes) of Orobanchaceae (Broomrape family). They are parasites. Lacking chlorophyll, they derive sugars and other nutrients needed for growth from the root systems of nearby shrubs, often sagebrush or rabbitbrush. The inflorescence emerges directly from the ground. It tends to be mostly purplish, yellowish, or brownish in color, with the corollas various combinations of purple, pink, yellow, and white. A taxonomic note: All Broomrapes in North America (about 17 species) were formerly in Orobanche, before that genus was split mid-Atlantic, with all the New World Broomrapes placed in genus Aphyllon and all Old World species remaining in Orobanche (see PhytoKeys 75: 107–118 for an explanation).

Our mystery plant also clearly has an elongate above-ground stem that bears flowers on short pedicels, as in Aphyllon parishii and several other species. In some other species the flowers emerge on much longer pedicels from a very short, below-ground stem—which is the case in two other species of Aphyllon found in the Bodie Hills: A. corymbosum and A. fasciculatum.

The Aphyllon observations in Adobe Valley have been difficult to identify and it’s been speculated (here and here) that an undescribed taxon may be lurking in that area. Could the Aphyllon near Aurora fit into this potentially new taxon also? Photographs showing details of flowers, bracts, and stem are needed.

Mystery Plant #2: A Silene Near Cow Camp Road

This plant is definitely in Caryophyllaceae (Pink family); I think it’s a Silene (because of the notched petals), maybe Silene nuda (Sticky catchfly). But in these photos that came to me by way of the Eastern Sierra Land Trust, from someone wanting to identify it, the image resolution is just a bit too low for a confident identification, so it needs to be revisited in the field. This was seen (in early August, 2019) in the central Bodie Hills, roughly mid-way between Cow Camp Road and Rough Creek, a little north of “Halfway Camp”, elevation about 7650 feet.

Another tall, perennial Silene reported to occur in the eastern Sierra is S. verecunda (San Francisco campion). In Silene nuda, the pedicel and calyx are glandular-puberulent to glandular-hairy. In Silene verecunda, the pedicel and calyx are puberulent (short-hairy), but not glandular. Photos of the plants should therefore include close-ups of the flower, calyx, and pedicel. Clear views of the basal and cauline leaves (showing shape, hairiness, and relative size) would be helpful as well.

The nearest collection of Silene nuda is in Douglas County near Topaz Lake. The species occurs in the northern Sierra Nevada—mostly north of Tahoe—to south-central and southeast Oregon, southern Idaho and across northern and central Nevada. If confirmed here, the Bodie Hills would be the southwestern-most known occurrence of Silene nuda.

A map of Silene nuda collections (sources: CCH2 and IRHN)

Mystery Plant #3. A Pine Near Millersville

High on a remote mountain slope 1.2 miles north-northwest of Potato Peak, above the head of a steep gully at 9,540 feet, and surrounded by thickets of mountain-mahogany, is a small stand of pines. But which one? I think they’re most likely Limber pines (Pinus flexilis), because that’s what occurs at a similar elevation on the north slope of Bodie Mountain, but Lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta subsp. murrayana) occur in scattered, mostly small stands in the central Bodie Hills too. A much closer look at these pines is needed, ideally documenting their overall appearance, the number of needles per fascicle, and the size and appearance of the cones.

Viewed from far down in Aurora Canyon, the details needed for a confident identification are not visible. This stand of pines is a little north of the site of Millersville (topic of an earlier post).

Copyright © Tim Messick 2023. All rights reserved.

4 Comments

Posted in Bodie Hills, Botany, Plant Identification

Tagged , , , , ,