I’m a botanist, not a Pepo person.
JARVIS, C. E. 1992. Seventy-Two Proposals for the Conservation of Types of Selected Linnaean Generic Names, the Report of Subcommittee 3C on the Lectotypification of Linnaean Generic Names. Taxon 41(3):552-583.
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Cal Photo of the Day – Phacelia viscida
The UC Berkeley homepage photo of the day [by Martin Sundberg] highlights the super cool work of the Gordon Frankie lab and the Urban Bee Gardens.
Their awesome research is expanding the applied uses and economic utility of Phacelia taxa in agriculture and apiculture.
And what’s that in the foreground? Phacelia viscida!
2013 Jepson Herbarium Workshops
The new schedule is out for the 2013 year of the Jepson Herbarium Workshops! http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops/2013/index.html
I am going to be teaching Basic Botany: Mastering the second edition of The Jepson Manual – with two options for workshop dates. One workshop will be offered on Feb 9th and another on Mar 9th. This should be a good early spring and excellent class series that we have developed from the Jepson Manual 101 clinics this year.
Registration is open early online for Friends of the Jepson Herbarium http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops/2013/regform_2013.html Questions can be directed to our courageous Jepson Workshop Coordinator. Information for past years and for the new 2013 schedule for the Jepson Workshops can be found at http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops/
California Botanical Society online payments!
The California Botanical Society has online payments available on the updated website! Check it out, there is great stuff for everyone looking to join the epic Society or renew your membership, apply for the Annetta Carter Memorial Fund, order back issues, link over to new issues of Madroño, get information for submitting articles to Madroño, or save the date for the upcoming Centennial Celebration April 12-14, 2013.
I heard a rumor that signed copies of a special issue could be requested [KELCH, D. G., and A. MURDOCK. 2012. Flora of the Carquinez Strait Region, Contra Costa and Solano Counties, California. Madroño 59(2):47-108.]
Online payment is available at http://www.calbotsoc.org/payment.html
Any questions, comments, issues, glitches, or requests can be directed to any of the members of council. Compliments for the updated webpage can be sent to our wonderful webmaster.
Jepson Workshops Blog
The Jepson Herbarium Workshops has a great tumblr going.
http://jepsonworkshops.tumblr.com
Part inspiration from past workshops, and part anticipation for the upcoming year. Share your favorite photos from workshops you have attended with our Jepson Workshop coordinator via email. I think my favorite so far is from the ‘planning’ post. Although I am partial to that Phacelia Friday.
This is a typical scene of botanists starting to scatter across the landscape at a stop from the 2012 White Mountains workshop.
URAP project deadline extended
The project deadline for the Fall 2012 URAP project has been extended until September 7th at 3pm!
A list of the open and extended projects is available here.
Project description available at the Baldwin URAP project page [here] and and at the link through the title below. Information and application available at the UC Berkeley URAP [Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program] website [http://research.berkeley.edu/urap/index.php].
Phylogenetic relationships and species circumscription of tribe Romanzoffieae (Boraginaceae)
Deadline for this project (only) is extended to Friday, September 7th at 3pm. SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: Applicants should enter a URAP application on line. Activate it by submitting paper copy DIRECTLY to the faculty member’s departmental mailbox. Apply as soon as possible because projects may be closed as soon as they are filled. Do not wait until the deadline.
SNARL
Along with the upcoming Jepson Workshop to the White Mountains, I am also pretty excited to extend the field trip by staying at SNARL. Any UC Reserve is great, but this one has a particular magic for me. I was fortunate to be funded by the UC VESR research grant during my MS thesis and stayed at SNARL for field research – and the phacelias in that area are great – in terms of diversity, historical collections, and ability to grow in the cracks of the parking lot. Trigger came along with me on those trips and enjoyed the sagebrush – but will be on a vacation for this one. Service dogs are working dogs, and get vacation days too.
One month to go!
The Jepson Workshop to the White Mountains is coming up and I am excited to revisit the area again. I had a chance to go on the 2009 Workshop and it was amazing. Of course. There was snow, there were bristlecones, and of course there were phacelias.
Phacelia hastata var. compacta
Continuing the perennial phacelia binge – here is the entire leaved, mat-forming [hey- compact!] and slightly glandular variety of Phacelia hastata of the Sierra Nevadas [CA and NV]. The hispid hairs are really noticeable on the calyx lobes, and some of the odder populations have lavender corollas – but most have white/cream petals.
Phacelia imbricata var. imbricata
Phacelia imbricata is a variable taxon, but can be recognized in the field by the overlapping outer calyx lobe [hence "imbricata"] and the dissected basal leaves. Phacelia imbricata var. imbricata occurs throughout California, with two varieties in southern California. However, intergradations with almost every perennial taxon occur throughout the range. The plants are on exposed slopes and roadsides. Finding plants along the way on summer hikes can be pretty delightful in the Coast Ranges – with the white corollas and yellow-green or grey-green leaves these plants [and Eriodictyon] keep the hydrophyll season going.
Phacelia corymbosa
Phacelia corymbosa is another lovely perennial phacelia, but is covered with short glandular hairs in contrast to the long stinging hairs of Phacelia nemoralis. There can still be stabby hairs occasionally, so care is always a good idea – on this or any perennial phacelia. The glandular exudate stains newspapers when specimens are pressed, and can cause contact dermatitis. Maybe. The glandular trichomes haven’t been tested in this species – but it seems reasonable [see anything by Gary Reynolds - Reynolds and Rodriguez 1979, Reynolds et al. 1980, Reynolds 1981, Reynolds and Rodriguez 1981a, Reynolds and Rodriguez 1981b, Reynolds et al. 1986, Reynolds and Rodriguez 1986]. I get the itchies.
Corollas are white or fade cream and are readily dehiscent, with the typical long exserted stamens of the perennial phacelia group. Leaves are nicely green, and basal leaves usually dissected or lobed, but distal leaves can be simple and entire. There are usually many flowering stems. Jepson recombined this as a variety, if looking for the taxon in the 1943 flora.
The plants form mats on serpentine slopes or banks, and I found groupings on a riverbank. The previous year['s] accumulated basal leaves mound up underneath the new year’s basal rosette.
Shade phacelia
The common name of Phacelia nemoralis is Shade Phacelia. The habit is generally what you might think from the common name – in thick chaparral, on hills with some cover, along trails near a water source, under a bit of shrubbery. The long hairs catch water droplets in early morning, and the leaves are a light green. The distal leaves can be simple and entire and absent the typical pair of lobes that are common [although occasionally absent there too] in the basal rosette, and can sometimes cause confusion when keying out with Phacelia californica. So far the habit and habitat hasn’t caused too many mix ups with Phacelia argentea, but the leaf venation can sometimes look impressed. Sometimes the plants are single/solitary at the base of dry slopes – but there are some very prolific and floriferous ones this year that are all jumbled up in the chaparral, but if you trace these flowering stems down to the base they are individual plants.
Phacelia nemoralis var. nemoralis
This is the central California variety of Phacelia nemoralis. The other one is northern California and up in Oregon & Washington. The younger inflorescences are green fuzzy caterpillars, with long exserted stamens and small green-white corollas. These plants were covered with the stinging hairs. Even 100 yr old herbarium specimens attack – hairs break off and get into my skin. Associated species were stinging nettle, brambles, thistles, and poison oak. Fun!
hiking prohibited
Guess where the population of Phacelia californica is located in this photo? I see it every day. It taunts me with inaccessibility.
Car botany is sometimes so tempting – but so difficult to actually make happen. I can be reading or talking and see one inflorescence and scream that there is a phacelia and we have to go back. But finding that single plant again on the opposite direction? There are blind curves and no parking signs and eroding cliffs and huge trenches that drop off to nowhere.
Then there is this location, which I pass everyday. I know where the plants are. Huge mats of plants, big inflorescences, blooming March-now. Those are the good things. The bad things are the absence of anything remotely like a shoulder, lots of little landslides, lots of big rocks that crash into the middle of the road, large signs prohibiting hiking or climbing, sheriffs who are kind and gentle but still ticket you if you stop, lots of very cool large construction, and the other plants are all on really loose scree up the road. When construction is finished I will be the first to get a good photo of these plants & the warning sign by actually standing in front of them. Finally.
Phacelia californica
I was going through some recent trips to upload to CalPhotos, because I was a little bummed as one of the populations of Phacelia californica in Mendocino was completely blasted and totally past bloom, so I was trying to salvage some shots. I did get photos Phacelia malvifolia – which was growing all over the hillside. Win. I never have good photos of the perennial phacelias. I want to. I do. The plants just always seem to be on undercut rubbly slopes, or “disturbed roadsides”, in poison oak, or at the end of a long day.
And yet once I am comfortable running analyses in computerland I think that it would have been so much better to have had the camera, dermatitis and cut glass be damned. I have my tetanus booster. But then I saw the super happy cultivated plants at Golden Gate Park, and all was well.
Westport Phacelia californica
Golden Gate Park Phacelia californica
I have been thinking about these Mendocino populations since a plant tax field trip, when I was working out how to learn and key the multiplicities of plant variation across distributions – but so have a lot of other people. Heckard noted the variation in plant populations in his monograph [HECKARD, L. R. 1960. Taxonomic studies in the Phacelia magellanica polyploid complex, with special reference to the California members. University of California Publications in Botany 32:1-126.], and odd specimens are listed on the Jepson eFlora page for Phacelia californica.
Admittedly, plants look different depending on where and when you come across them. I am partial to the coastal forms of Phacelia californica, but sometimes the basal rosette approaches Phacelia argentea with mostly entire leaves and causes look-alike difficulties. And Phacelia californica can also have white or cream corollas. Ack. Inland populations have an entirely different set of issues with intergradation with Phacelia imbricata and looking a lot like Phacelia nemoralis var. nemoralis. Ack again.
Phacelia californica
Phacelia argentea
Phacelia argentea corolla
Phacelia argentea inflorescence
Summer in the park
Been diving into some different projects recently, and today was back with happy Phacelia specimens and nomenclature at CalAcademy. The set up for visiting is pretty nice [pretty nice, come on - it is inside the California Academy of Sciences, of course it is amazing!], with a gorgeous set of windows and big desk and lights and scope and lots of plug ins for gadgets. The inside of the compactors is set to bone chill, so this is a delightful space that doesn’t require full snow gear.
I am going to point out that my dissection kit [pictured below] was originally purchased for botany lab class at UC Davis. Such a useful class purchase. That, a hand lens+lanyard, and the 1993 Jepson Manual. All practical, all used well beyond the original class.
The weirdest thing is that I haven’t yet gone to CalAcademy yet this year as a member. How has that even happened? I wave at Claude in his tank when I check in.
There are always brillig things to see in Golden Gate Park like the sunshine, and the Conservatory of Flowers, and the bison! Trigger stopped next to the ever-blooming Phacelia californica in the California section across from CalAcademy.
A speculative field trip
Phacelia bolanderi, perennial.
Not all locations yield new populations of plants for my research project, but the search is always worth it. Going north is always a good decision.
