I need to start taking the real camera on these hikes. This is a crappy phone camera photo of one of the dozen or so species of plants in bloom in the hills around here right now. It’s Eschscholzia parishii, a close relative of the California poppy. There’s another Eschscholzia around, E. minutiflora, which has petals less than a quarter-inch long. I’m looking forward to finding that one.
E. parishii is nice enough too, a bit smaller than its coastal cousin and with more of a yellow cast to the flowers. It was named by UC Berkeley botanist Edwin Lee Greene after — as near as I can tell — Samuel Bonsall Parish, a Southern California amateur botanist who contributed immensely to the state of Southern California botany until his death in 1928 at age 90. (The plant may have been named for his brother William, also an active botanist.) S.B. Parish published an article in the March, 1891 issue of Garden and Forest, entitled “The arborescent Yuccas of California”*, a copy of which I have been trying to obtain for some time without success. It was Parish who showed the much more prominent plant explorer Georg Engelmann the latter’s first “teddy bear” cholla, which Engelmann later described for science. This was in Whitewater Canyon about ten miles north of where I’m sitting as I type this. The story — perhaps embellished by Parish — was that Engelmann was so taken by his first sight of the glowing chollas that he backed up in awe — right into a patch of the selfsame chollas.
Greene, Berkeley’s first botanist, was what the taxonomists would call an rather extreme splitter. He actually named 116 distinct taxa within Eschscholzia: species, subspecies, and varieties. Willis Lynn Jepson, for whom the book is named, cut that down to eight species. Somehow E. parishii survived the reorganization.
E. parishii is restricted in its distribution to the Colorado River and Sea of Cortez drainage, its territory a thin arcing band that traces the eastern slopes of the Peninsular Ranges from Baja California Sur to around Joshua Tree National Park, and then south again on the slopes of the Orocopia and Chocolate Mountains. There’s also a small disjunct piece of the species’ range on the Sonora coast. But aside from that it’s a Colorado Desert endemic, and as such one of the plants that defines this place. You gotta love that.
*Gard. & For., 1: 135, 136, March, 1891: any help much appreciated. And I’m still looking for a copy of McKelvey’s Yuccas of the Southwestern United States, as well.
This reminds me…how is the Joshua Tree writing coming along? After reading the excerpts you have posted on your blog, I have been anxious to read the full work!
It’s coming along rather slowly given my inability to consult my books, which are still boxed up. Fortunately, I just got shelves tonight.
Love this little plant. I saw what I think was E. minutifolia down in Anza-Borrego a couple weeks ago, though I was too lazy to actually key it out (nor was I about to carry around a Jepson!). And yes, you should take a real camera, though only at the risk of stopping every few steps and having to force yourself to get out from behind the lens. During three days in the desert I took over 500 photos, and didn’t take more only because I was afraid I was driving my poor friend crazy…..!
Well I’m sure it will be well worth the wait! Glad to hear your settling into the new place….