South Fork Meadows Botanical Exploration with Duncan Bell

The San Bernardino Mountains are a biodiversity hotspot, home to many rare endemic species found nowhere else on planet earth. Join SCB board member, and senior conservation botanist for California Botanic Garden, Duncan Bell, for a day of exploring some of the San Bernardino Mountains most unique habitats, and visiting with some of these habitats rarest plant residents. We will be exploring montane meadows, pebble-plains, and limestone canyons, with the possibility of seeing many narrowly endemic species, some threatened and endangered, most known only from this mountain range. The main areas of interest for the day will be Cushenburry Canyon, northern Baldwin Lake, and the greater Holcomb Valley region. If there is time at the end some of the other montane meadows on the south side of Big Bear Lake may also be visited. We will be traveling on rough unpaved forest service roads, so a high clearance vehicle with good tires will be required. The current trip date is Sunday June 2nd, but may be shifted a week or two based on phenology.

Details on where and when to meet will be provided before the trip.

Photos below by Duncan Bell in the following order:

Eriogonum ovalifolium var.vineum (Polygonaceae) Cushenbury buckwheat, Linanthus killipii (Polemoniaceae) Baldwin lake linanthus, Castilleja cinerea (Orobanchaceae) Ash gray paintbrush

Host or Publisher Southern California Botanists