Day on Bald Mountain
I hiked to the summit of Bald Mountain east of Shaver Lake and west of Dinkey Creek, Fresno County, CA. Hall and Chandler observed Lewisia leeana in 1900 in "region of Dinkey Creek (Bald Mt.); Sierra Nevada Mountains, Bald Mt."1 It appears that it wasn't this Bald Mountain. I carefully observed the summit area and flanks of Bald Mountain where L. leeana would likely be found and saw none. The summit of Bald Mountain (7,826) is almost 1,000 feet lower than than the lowest known elevation for L. leeana anywhere else in Fresno County (8,713'GPS, 8,720'map)2. I did see a few other plants during the trip as well as quite a few jeeps and ATVs. For a list of the plants seen on the trip go to http://www.inaturalist.org/calendar/sekihiker/2014/8/9.
1 http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/get_consort.pl?taxon_name=Lewisia+leeana&county=06019
2 http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/819752
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Nice report, and you are inspiring me to start doing the same.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
I noticed the elevation for that specimen is 9000 feet, which is a lot higher than any of the immediately surrounding slopes and peaks. The closest peak that is in the right elevation range is Bear Peak. Do you think it's possible that they could have recorded the wrong name?
By the way, good use of the information from CCH and Calphotos. Those are two of the same resources that CNPS uses when they are researching species that may potentially be listed.
I'm not sure if you've seen it yet but I noticed that Calflora has one observation that was made this year in the Dinkey Creek area: http://www.calflora.org/entry/poe.html#vrid=oe7102
It's near Black Peak, one of the places you are planning to explore.
Good gravy, Belinda. I completely ignored the elevation in Hall and Chandler's observation. Thanks for pointing it out. Bear (were they thinking Bare and wrote down Bald?) Mountain sure could have been the place where they saw L. leeana, since it has an elevation of 9,526 feet and is about four miles south of Dinkey Lakes.
I probably would not have gone up Bald Mtn the other day if I had converted their elevation to feet but it was fun to see the Ivesia and the mistletoe among other things.
Re. Dolly B. Chapman's observation, my guess is that all the country above 9,000 feet in the area surrounding Dinkey Lakes supports L. leeana. It's been a long time since I've been to Dinkey Lakes so I need to get back there.
Thanks again for your support.
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