by Marti Rutherford
You have probably wandered the nursery isles looking for the ever more popular native plants being sold. Do you ever consider how those plants have been propagated? Many, if not most, native plants in the nursery trade are propagated by cuttings. The nursery person knows what the plant will look like and behave like. And (more…)
INVASIVE SPECIES REPORT by Mark Skinner
There is a weed removal initiative underway called the South Central Coast Invasive Species Eradication Project. Funded by the Wildlife Conservation Board and matching partners the $600K project joins CalIPC with multiple partners in a merged region of San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County with help from the Weed Management Area of San Luis Obispo County. This effort is targeting weeds with a realistic chance of eradicating 95% of their populations in five years.
The weeds selected for removal include:
The sea lavenders are at threat to Cordlylanthus maritimus ssp. maritimus – salt marsh bird’s beak and Suaeda californica -California seablite. They have appeared along the boardwalk in Morro Bay State Park In the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. Russian wheatgrass can take over areas that are habitat for Atriplex leucophylla – Saltbush, Beach-Bur, Red Sand-Verbena and Dunedelion.
The agencies eradicating the weeds will track their progress through CalWeedMapper that CalIPC arranged. Partners will meet annually to report on progress.
The cover drawing and article for this issue of the OBISPOENSIS was written and drawn by Alice Meyer. She was a very active member (and first Hoover Award Recipient in the 1970 and 80’s. She is the one who named our newsletter, OBISPOENSIS, and served as its editor (and typist) for the many years. She is also responsible for setting up the first successful chapter plant sales as well as recruiting our current Plant Sale Chair. She didn’t restrict herself to CNPS. She was also active in the Morro Bay Audubon to which she submitted a number of articles entitled “MEET A NATIVE PLANT’. Below is one of those articles. It was chosen since milkweeds are so important in the conservation of the Monarch butterfly and is being encouraged as a garden plant. Members of this genus serve as the primary food source for Monarch butterfly larva. While eating the milkweed leaves, the larva incorporate the milkweed toxins into their bodies and its these milkweed toxins that protect the Monarch larva from most predators.
I do need to mention a taxonomic update. In her first paragraph Alice places the milkweeds in the taxonomic family, Asclepiadaceae. This was where it was placed up until the 1990’s. Today the two families of milky sapped species [milkweeds (Asclepias) and dogbanes (Apocynum)] have been combined into the single family, Apocynaceae. Milkweeds are primarily temperate in distribution while the dogbane relatives are primarily tropical. Classical taxonomic work always accepted these two families as very closely related. Modern taxonomic studies (including DNA work) have discover the relationships to be intertwined which required their unification into a single family. A number of these formally separated but closely related families have now been combined.
-Dirk Walters
MEET A NATIVE PLANT Asclepias eriocarpus
Milkweed is a perennial plant of the milkweed family (Asclepidiaceae) family. The species shown is common in the Coast Ranges, Sierra Foothills south to Coastal Southern California from 100 to 2000 ft. The species shown is Asclepias eriocarpa (as-KLEP-i-as aor-ee-CARP-a). Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on this plant. The plants are erect and sturdy from 18-36” tall, with leaves 3-4” long, in whorls of 3 or 4 leaves. These are covered with fine hairs, which make them look and feel like flannel. Stems and leaves contain a milky juice, a form of latex.
The clusters of flowers appear in May at the ends of stems between the leaves. The structure of the flowers is very unusual. The corolla is cut into 5 petals. These are turned down so the hide the calyx. The stamens stalks are joined into a tube and the five ‘hoods’ are attached to the base of the column; this is the ‘crown’ of corona, and in this species the crown is pink or purplish. It is actually the nectary of the flower. The flower and its stem is creamy white. In the center of the flower is a fleshy column or tube formed by the stalks of the stamens, capped by the stigma, hiding the two tubes of styles leading down to the ovaries.
The pollen in each anther-cell is a waxy mass of different anthers and adjacent masses of different anthers are attached to a cleft gland. This resembles tiny saddle-bags, clipped together, and if a bee catches her foot in the cleft she may pull out and fly away with two pollen masses to fertilize another flower. To do this, she must get her foot caught in the cleft of another flower.
The probabilities of a bee catching a foot in the cleft of two different flowers, first to collect the pollen sacs, then to deposit them in another flower is so remote that this is called ‘lottery pollination’. When a flower is pollinated its stem enlarges and the petals fall off. The calyx remains at the base of the downy seed pod which becomes 3 to 4” long and the remains of the hoods hang on to the tip of the pod for time. When the pod is ripe, and dry, it splits lengthwise, revealing neat rows of seeds, each with a parachute of fine hairs attached. As soon as the these hairs are dry, the seeds will fly away on the wind to be dispersed. Flowers that have not been pollinated along with their stems, wither and fall away.
-Alice G. Meyer
Image By Jason Hollinger (Lace Lichen Uploaded by Amada44) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The law takes effect January 1, 2016, making California the first state to recognize a lichen as a state symbol. Lace lichen joins the California poppy as the state flower and the grizzly bear as the state animal.
The California Lichen Society promotes the appreciation, conservation, and study of California lichens, and has posted a beautiful article about our new state lichen on their website: http://californialichens.org/state-lichen/
CALS sees this designation as an important step in increasing public awareness of the significant roles that lichens play in our natural environment. Calling attention to lichens by recognizing one of them as the California State Lichen creates an opportunity for us to learn about and celebrate the things that make California special.
I am the editor of Madroño, the Journal of the California Botanical Society. In the most recent issue Jay Sexton, Katie Ferris, and Steve Schoenig, published their discovery of the fern-leaved monkeyflower (Mimulus filicifolius). It’s a new species with finely divided, bi-pinnately compound leaves found in the northwestern Sierra Nevada where it occurs mostly on ephemeral seeps in rock outcrops.
Mimulus filicifolius is highly restricted, known only from Butte and Plumas Counties within the Plumas National Forest, and should therefor be considered in future conservation strategies.
As new botanical discoveries like this one are made, revised treatments for the Jepson Manual will be published online at the Jepson eFlora.
− Matt Ritter
Fellow of the California Native Plant Society CNPS presents the Fellow award once a year as a means of awarding special recognition to persons who have made an outstanding contribution to furthering appreciation and conservation of California native flora and to the success of the Society.
On the recommendation of the Board of Directors of CNPS, the Chapter Council has elected Dr. Dirk Walters to be made a Fellow of the California Native Plant Society.
Dirk Walters has been active in the conservation of native plants since his arrival in California in the late 1960s, where he joined and became an active member of the newly formed San Luis Obispo Chapter serving in leadership positions on both the Chapter and State level. Dirk has blended his position as a Professor of Botany at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with the interests of CNPS by arranging for Chapter meetings on campus and encouraging student membership.
Walters has performed botanical monitoring on beheld of CNPS’s conservation program and has influenced planning at the Hearst Ranch and other locations in San Luis Obispo County, In the early 1980’s Dirk, along with his wife Bonnie, undertook the work of monitoring the threatened and endangered Nipomo Lupine, publishing “The Natural History of the Nipomo Lupine (Lupinus nipomensis Eastwood)” in the journal Crossoma.
Educating, hiking, teaching, plant-selling, writing, and advocating appreciation of native plants by the public are all activities Dirk is accomplished at. He has lead numerous field trips and produced many plant lists for different areas of San Luis Obispo County, has authored, co-authored, and contributed to academic and local publications including Vascular Plant Taxonomy and Wildflowers of San Luis Obispo, California. For many years has set up and staffed CNPS booths at community events and actively promoted CNPS with other conservation organizations that he is involved with.