Natural History Wanderings

Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve reports:

It’s been a very dry winter again this year, but after the recent late rains, there appears to be a good number of poppy plants starting to germinate. However, there is a cold storm predicted to come in, so the late germination may affect their ability to withstand the freezing temperatures.

2/18/13: Mike Powell from Latest Poppy Reserve Research Field Notes and Observations at Antelope Valley just posted this wildflower report.

  I first inventoried the monitoring plot near the Visitor Center.  I found and marked 32 to 40 poppy plants (most with their first true leaves) in the entire plot; 1 square meter.  I believe that is the most we have ever found in this plot.  Also saw a few pygmy leaved lupine and even fewer blue dicks or wild onion along with the expected filaree and grasses.

Next plot.  I found maybe 18 to 20 poppy plants (most with their first true leaves) in the lower half of the plot. Extrapolating to the full 1 square meter plot, there could be 40 poppy plants total but the upper half seems to have denser grasses and, I believe, normally fewer poppies.  The plot has a good crop of goldfields, a bunch of blue dicks/wild onions and I found one fiddleneck cot.

Last plot.  Again, I found 38 poppy plants in this entire plot and a few p-l lupine plants as well.  If my counts are close to complete, it appears that the poppy plant densities for areas around the monitoring plots are amazing consistent this year; except for the middle east ridge with 4 to 5 times as many poppies.  When I started doing field observations, the east ridge had some of the best poppy displays but the area has had fewer poppies the last few years.  It looks like that area might be best again this year if the poppies survive and grow to maturity.  It was easy to find poppy plants in the immediate areas around the monitoring plots so the plot numbers seem to be representative of the wider area.

I went looking for the colony of g-s lupine growing near the col at the head end of that valley.  I only found one small, very healthy looking plant but maybe I missed the others.  I also checked the colony of g-s lupine plants near the western end of the Tehachapi Vista trail.  Only the plant that had a blossom stem starting to open on my last visit was blooming but the other large plants had numerous buds so there is still hope for the future; they’re just developing slower than I expected.

The only other significant item to report is the Joshua trees by the Visitor Center.  I think that each mother tree might have 3 or 4 buds forming.

Right now, the forecast calls for possible snow throughout Wednesday.  Total snow fall could be as much as 7 to 10 inches.  That is equivalent to almost an inch of rain so this could be the strongest storm of the winter, so far.  To determine if the snow causes poppy plant mortality, we need to re-inventory the plots shortly after the snow melts to see how many, if any, of the marked plants have been killed.  It appeared that a number of larger poppy plants died following a significant snowfall several years ago so I anticipate seeing more plant mortality this time but, this time, we have a chance to collect quantifiable data.  It might take a few days for the damage to be obvious but we probably should do the re-inventorying within a week so any additional seed germination doesn’t fuzzy the data.

Follow all the reports at: Latest Poppy Reserve Research Field Notes and Observations