habitat ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles National Monument - east

Pinnacles National Monument - east entrance
June 9, 2011

This was the latest in the year that we've visited Pinnacles... and for good reason. We've become total temperature wimps and are quite fond of our usual 50-60°F here in Pacific Grove on the coast. So, when we go some place that gets warmer than 80°F, we melt. It actually hit 87°F at Pinnacles this day, although it could have been much worse at 105°F a couple weeks later. Unfortunately we picked south-facing trails with very little shade for our uphill climb. Phew! The different flowers and animals we saw made it all worth the heat.

ps 12/15/11 - For pictures of Pinnacles in mid-December, check out My Back 40 (Feet).

Bigelow's spike-moss ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

possible Bigelow's spike-moss
possible Selaginella bigelovii
Selaginellaceae

posted 09/08/11 - Well, I'll be! Here's a new plant that totally has been beyond my radar. Calflora (linked in the scientific name above) calls this a mosslike fern, whereas Wikipedia lists it as a fern ally. Quite honestly, I'm still looking into the differences between spike-mosses and true mosses. This species is listed on the Pinnacles CNPS plant list, so it's a real possibility. I got the heads up from sdttds on my Flickr photo. For a nice blog post about Selaginella, check out In the Garden.

CA buckwheat ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

California buckwheat
Eriogonum fasciculatum var. foliolosum
Polygonaceae

updated 09/10/14 - There are 4 var. of Eriogonum fasciculatum, and only 2 are reported for Pinnacles.  I'm pretty confident now that this is the greener foliolosum and not the fuzzy, grayer polifolium.  The original post is below:

Good golly! This is my best guess for buckwheat. At least I'm starting to familiarize myself with a few of the 268 Eriogonum species/varieties found in California. It's no wonder so many animals feed on buckwheats, including caterpillars of the bernardino dotted blue shown previous to this post. There's also a fun, mysterious arthropod peeking around the flowers in the second pic above.

The following Eriogonum names were taken from the 2005 Pinnacles plant list and the embedded links are for my future reference:

(CalPhotos) --- (Calflora) --- (Jepson)
angle-stemmed buckwheat --- E. angulosum --- chaparral
Coville's buckwheat --- E. covilleanum --- rock & scree
elegant buckwheat --- E. elegans --- riparian
long-stemmed buckwheat --- E. elongatum --- rock & scree
California buckwheat --- E. fasciculatum var. foliolosum --- chaparral
California buckwheat --- E. fasciculatum var. polifolium --- chaparral
graceful buckwheat --- E. gracile var. gracile --- chaparral
Pinnacles buckwheat --- E. nortonii --- rock & scree
nude buckwheat --- E. nudum var. auriculatum --- rock & scree
nude buckwheat --- E. nudum var. indictum --- chaparral
virgate buckwheat --- E. roseum --- rock & scree
rock buckwheat --- E. saxatile --- rock & scree
Wright's buckwheat --- E. wrightii var. subscaposum --- rock & scree

bernardino dotted blue ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

bernardino dotted blue
Euphilotes bernardino
for more information click here and here

This little butterfly was mud-puddling with several others of its kind in a small area where water was seeping from the ground. As I was attempting to get pictures for a clear ID, I wiped my hand across my forehead to collect sweat and reached down for the butterfly to walk onto it. It stayed there for about 10 minutes with its proboscis probing around my finger as I clumsily tried to take pictures with my other hand. The result was a crappy photo of the butterfly and a lovely shot of a rock that looks like Jabba the Hutt.