The upcoming presentation is on plants that uptake nickel as a biological weapon to combat insect predation, and the insect that is beating the system reinforces the connectedness between plants and other features of the natural world. In the Carrizo Plain there are plants that only grow in salty soils, or gypsum rich soils, or iron-rich friable soils. Some are dependent on the fungal population, some on forced absence of other species generated by the soil chemistry which eliminates competition. The fungi, which have shown up in profusion this year have a completely different roster of species in the Cambria pines (great January field trip by the way), and in the Los Osos Oaks. Without the mushrooms, dead stuff will accumulate on the ground, and the fungi chew into the pine needles and old branches to release the nutrients for the next generation of plants. That is why CNPS, in a resolution made several decades ago, stated that it was ‘more than just plants’ in considering ecosytem integrity.
There is, of course, always a problem in these days of human activity in the natural environment. As Mark Skinner points out, we have introduced weeds that are great ‘generalists,’ have a rapid and early growth cycle, and abundant seed production. These can cover the substrate, denying the space needed for the fruiting of mushrooms, and eliminating space for natives. Sometimes the soils that are still ‘nasty’ as far as the aliens are concerned, will become the last stands for important parts of the California flora.
The LA County Board of Supervisors will consider whether or not to approve the proposed Centennial development next Tuesday, December 11.
Although this project is located in LA County, we believe this is an issue that impacts all of California, both in terms of our biodiversity and the precedent it sets for sprawl at the Wildland Urban Interface. Tejon Ranch is one of the most biodiverse areas of California, containing 14% of California’s native flora and a third of our native oaks. What’s more, it’s situated in a high fire hazard severity zone, putting future residents in harm’s way. We are advocating for the conservation of this land in its entirety.
California Dudleyas are easy to grow. Illegal wild collection can be disrupted via legal propagation. I propagate Dudleya with middle school science classes. If seventh-graders can grow these natives from seed, you can too.
Home gardens are a good source of Dudleya seed. Collect whole flower clusters in the late summer. Dry and store in a paper bag. Many Dudleya varieties freely hybridize, so garden collections are a good source of unique types
Seeds are microscopic. Small brown crescents or football shaped ovals. Seeds do not need to be cleaned, but crush pods to release the seeds. Hundreds of seeds are found in every flower.
Broadcast seeds on the top surface of a “soiless mix”. I use the those ubiquitos landscape flats to seed individual varieties. I use stucco sand, perlite and vermiculite and a time release fertilizer. No composts or peatmoss at this stage.
Seeds have no dormancy and can be sown any month of the year. A single teaspoon of seed will germinate hundreds to thousands of tiny plantlets.
I germinate flats under a spun row cover inside a shade house. Plants are misted four times per day. via a battery operated hose timer and “mister” drip emitters. Flats are kept uniformily moist, but not soaked.
Expect germination in a week to 10 days.
Plantlets are lifted twice. Pricked up with a pen- cil or the tip of knife. The crowded plantlets are spaced on a fresh flat (100-200 per flat), and later lifted to cells or 3 inch pots. Algae scum remains a risk, so continue to use a soiless sand-rich mix.
Dudleya will be ready for “potting up” to commercial sized containers in 4-6 months. Final soil mix can be a garden loam or cactus mix. Overly rich soil can yield overly frost-sensitve plants.
Light shading (50-60% shadecloth) improves color and tone of the first year plants.
First year Dudleya lanceolata grown by Los Osos Middle School students ready for restoration planting.
Good news on the Sudden Oak Death front. As a result of last spring’s Sudden Oak Death Blitz, and additional collecting by agency staff, we find that. as yet, there were no positive finds in SLO County. In all, 699 trees were surveyed, of which 18.7% appeared symptomatic, but which did not test positive in the lab. It appears that there are other infections of California Bay that appear similar to those of SOD. None the less, as the disease is present just north of the county line on the Big Sur coast, the risk still hangs over us like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.
Bill Deneen, long time CNPS member, Hoover Awardee, and champion of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes died at the age of 93 in September. Bill taught biology at Santa Maria High School for 25 years, during which time he became a passionate advocate for the environment. He worked with Kathleen Goddard Jones and others to keep a nuclear power plant from being built in the Nipomo Dunes, which he loved with a deep passion. Later he was arrested from ‘crossing the blue line’ at protests against the re-siting of the power plant at Diablo Canyon, earning him the title of ‘ecohooligan’ which he wore proudly for the rest of his life. In recent years he opposed the use of OHVs in the dunes, and was on the enemies list of the local OHV community. He founded an Environmental Award which he gave out to encourage conservation action, and in a touching moment in his failing last years was given his own award by his admirers. In a sort-of-goodbye party in 2015 held at the Dana Cultural Center, he received accolades from friends and family to notable politicians like then-Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian and Congresswoman Lois Capps. Capps called Bill a ‘national treasure’. Older members of the chapter will remember the many field trips he led into the dunes, and his fierce sense of humor. Bill… we will miss you… and thanks.
Digitization of herbarium specimens—capturing images and label data in digital formats—remains an enormous task for the world’s herbaria. For 22 institutions in the U.S. state of California, this job has become easier with a new 4-year, $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant (Award # 1802301) to establish a new California Phenology Thematic Collections Network (TCN). Spearheaded by Dr. Jenn Yost, Director the Hoover Herbarium at the California Polytechnic State University, this new network aims to image over 900,000 herbarium specimens from the oldest records, the most diverse families, and most threatened families in California. California is a biodiversity hotspot and home to more than one third of all U.S. plant species, emphasizing the need to understand this diverse and changing flora through herbarium records. The region’s herbaria already have a strong history of collaboration in the Consortium of California Herbaria, and this project aims to strengthen and expand the capabilities of this community of universities, research stations, natural history museums, and botanical gardens.
The project is trailblazing not only in its ambitious digitization goals and cast of collaborating institutions, but also in its research aim: to better understand flowering time shifts by recording flowering (i.e., phenological) data for each specimen digitized over the course of the grant. Flowering time is an important biological phenomenon for science, society, and biodiversity, and herbarium specimens can provide rich data on how flowering times vary across time and space. This project builds upon recent advancements in standardization and sharing of phenological data, including the Plant Phenology Ontology and data standards developed in collaboration with the New England Vascular Plants TCN, to capture phenological data. Furthermore, the project will digitize specimens of 250 taxa currently monitored by the California Phenology Project and National Phenology Network, empowering future cross-comparisons of specimen-based and observational phenological data. The institutions involved in this project will explore several workflows for capturing phenological data: from specimen sheets during imaging, from label text using a new Attribute Mining tool, and from images using crowd-sourced Notes from Nature expeditions that engage a broad audience of citizen scientists, students, and volunteers to produce phenological scorings. With the efforts of this community of California herbaria, the project hopes to build a strong foundation for the future of capturing phenological data from herbarium specimens.
All specimen images and records produced in this project will be publicly available for research, education, and outreach via the CCH2 portal, an open-source, web-accessible database platform widely used by other collections and TCNs. The project will also develop new tools in CCH2 to mine, explore, and store phenological data, and all data will be aggregated and available through the iDigBio portal. For Cal Poly, this means a lot of great changes. We have hired Katie Pearson as the Project Manager and she is now based here in San Luis Obispo. We have purchased an imaging station to image 40,000 specimens over the next few years. Annie Ayers, a Cal Poly undergraduate and CNPS board member, has been hired as a curatorial assistant. Our workflows are changing and pretty soon, you’ll be able to look at our specimens from the comfort of home!
The project runs from 2018 – 2022. Jason Alexander from UC Berkeley is the Data Manager and Katie Pearson is the Program Manager. The tools, techniques, and data generated as part of this project will expand the value of herbarium specimens in addressing society’s problems. More information can be found at http://www.capturingcaliforniasflowers.org or by emailing jyost@calpoly.edu. This project is funded by the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program of the National Science Foundation. Many California herbaria are contributing to this Thematic Collections Network.
Volunteer at the Hoover Herbarium
During the volunteer sessions at the Hoover Herbarium, people can take part in any number of activities. One of our primary responsibilities is mounting new specimens. This involves taking dried and pressed plants and glueing them to paper. When we mount plants, we do it in such a way that those specimens will last for hundreds of years. Each specimen is a physical record of what plants occurred where and when. Without this valuable information we wouldn’t know when a species goes extinct, expands or contracts its range, or where species occur. After mounting, the specimens are databased and geo-referenced. Then they are filed into the main collection. We have over 80,000 specimens at the Hoover Herbarium. We are also working on a SLO Voucher
Collection, which will contain one representative specimen for each species in the county. Volunteers look through our specimens and pick the one that should be added to the Voucher Collection. Additionally, we are actively working on our moss and lichen collections. Volunteers can choose what aspects of the work they would like to participate in. Any and everyone is welcome. The Hoover Herbarium is located on the 3rd floor of the Fisher Science Building (33) in rooms 352 and 359. Starting Sept 18th, the herbarium volunteers sessions will be Mondays from 3-5 pm and Fridays 9 – 11 and 1 – 3 pm.
Parking permits are required Monday through Thursday, 7:00 am through 10:00 pm; and Friday, 7:00 am through 5:00 pm. You can either buy a $6 day pass, a $4 3-hr pass, park in a metered space, or park off campus and walk in. Questions: email Jenn Yost at jyost@calpoly.edu
Acting on the nomination submitted by our chapter, the State Board recognized Dr. David Keil as a Fellow of the California Native Plant Society at its September meeting. He has been an active CNPS member; was a Cal Poly botany professor for over 37 years; and, through research and writing, has made significant contributions to California’s native flora.
Dave earned his B.S. in 1968 and M.S. in 1970 from Arizona State University in Tempe, and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Dave joined Cal Poly faculty in 1976, and two years later was appointed Director of the Robert F. Hoover Herbarium. His collection totals over 30,000 specimens, most of them housed at the Hoover Herbarium. He joined CNPS shortly after his arrival, and in 1978, served as the Chapter President. In earlier recognition of his generous contributions to our chapter, Dave was the recipient of the 1989 Hoover Award. He has led numerous chapter field trips for the San Luis Obispo chapter, some planned with detailed plant lists, some spur of the moment.
Dr. Keil has also presented chapter meeting programs and workshops on a regular basis. His broad knowledge of the county flora allowed him to surprise those attending with new discoveries, unusual findings, as well as his great slides. For anyone not familiar with county flora, Dave would answer any question. His small workshops conducted before chapter meetings include oak identification, plant collecting, rare plant training and a new grass identification key. In 2009 Dave’s participation on a ‘quick’ CNPS committee to develop a one page tri-fold of common plants for distribution by the City of San Luis Obispo became the 86 page Wildflowers of San Luis Obispo, California. It was an enormous success. As this nomination is being written, he is doing the proof reading on the revised second edition. After Dave’s retirement from teaching at Cal Poly, he was recruited to serve as chapter Vice President and has done so since 2016. He has always been a chapter resource.
At the state level he participated on the Rare Plant Scientific Advisory Committee from 1998 through 2001. Since 2009, he has served as a member of the Fremontia Editorial Advisory Board. From 2014 through 2016, Dave reviewed student grant applications with the Education Program Grants Subcommittee. On an annual basis since 2009, Dave has conducted multi-day plant science workshops on California flora for the State Education Program. For the workshop held in April 2018, Dave watched the county landscapes closely, knowing that the drought was adversely impacting the flora, but he was confident the workshop would be successful, and it was.
In the world of service to botanic science, he had made significant contribution to The Jepson Manual Project. He authored the Key to California Plant Families and served as the editor and primary author of the Asteraceae for both editions of The Jepson Manual. Key writing has always been one of Dave’s strengths, and it is a major part of the long-lasting legacy he has created throughout his career. For the second edition of The Jepson Manual, Dave authored a new key to families that encompasses the major taxonomic revisions that had taken place since 1993 and served as co-editor for the entire manual. His ability to track nomenclatural changes and translate them into meaningful morphological characters in all the major plant families was crucial for the writing of the new family key. Part of what makes Dave’s keys so valuable is that they are written with field botanists in mind, anticipating user misinterpretation on minor characters. This can only be done if the key writer is familiar with every other possible plant, which Dave usually is. Dave has authored over 130 species descriptions mostly in the Asteraceae, but also in the Poaceae and Ranunculaceae. Four taxa have been named in Dave’s honor: Ancistrocarphus keilii Morefield, Erigeron inornatus (A. Gray) A. Gray var. keilii G.L. Nesom, Wedelia keilii B.L. Turner, and Chrysanthellum keilii B.L. Turner.
During his more than 37 years as a professor at Cal Poly, Dave taught courses in general botany, plant taxonomy, field botany and biogeography. He was awarded the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1980. Each year Dave traveled around California with his field botany students, teaching them the elements of California flora. Students have described the course as both the hardest and best course they have taken during their college careers. Classes taught by Dave were often a life changing experience for students. One former student said, “I…was accepted into the ecology program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. During my year there, I took Dr. David Keil’s plant systematics class, which converted me from ecology to botany.”
Dr. Keil joins chapter members Dr. Dirk Walters and Dr. David Chipping as Fellows of CNPS. Past Fellows from the chapter include Dr. Malcolm McLeod and Alice and Bud Meyer.
Dave receiving his award Photo: Melissa Mooney. Laurel wreath: Mardi Niles
Join us for a day on the Morros and learn which plants grow on each of these volcanic plugs. Ascend one, two, or more. Here are the start times. (more…)
I know it seems too early to be thinking seeds. Many of my plants are just starting to bloom. I just wanted to remind those who are interested that the seed exchange is going to take place ate the October meeting before the main program. Let a few of your garden native plants go to seed and bring the seed to the seed exchange. More information will follow in newsletters to come. There is information on seed collection available on the cnpsslo website under the resources/growing natives tab (link). Marti Rutherford
This photograph, taken from Cerro San Luis, shows Bishop Peak, Cerro Romauldo, and in the misty distance, Hollister Peak. The hills on the extreme left margin of the picture are the serpentinite ridge that backs Cuesta College, and the hills of the extreme right right margin are the western portion of West Cuesta Ridge. One of the obvious visual features is the dark chaparral scrub of the peaks, and the brown of the late spring grasses (more…)
Home gardens are a good source of Dudleya seed. Collect whole flower clusters in the late summer. Dry and store in a paper bag. Many Dudleya varieties freely hybridize, so garden collections are a good source of unique types
Broadcast seeds on the top surface of a “soiless mix”. I use the those ubiquitos landscape flats to seed individual varieties. I use stucco sand, perlite and vermiculite and a time release fertilizer. No composts or peatmoss at this stage.
germinate flats under a spun row cover inside a shade house. Plants are misted four times per day. via a battery operated hose timer and “mister” drip emitters. Flats are kept uniformily moist, but not soaked.
Plantlets are lifted twice. Pricked up with a pen- cil or the tip of knife. The crowded plantlets are spaced on a fresh flat (100-200 per flat), and later lifted to cells or 3 inch pots. Algae scum remains a risk, so continue to use a soiless sand-rich mix.
First year Dudleya lanceolata grown by Los Osos Middle School students ready for restoration planting.
