u/NevCoNativePlants

Every time I see this precious I filled with gratitude for handfuls of reasons as it always takes a decent sized drive and hike into Alpine. This is an Ericaceae (blueberry, Madrone, manzanita, Rhododendron relation) and expresses that very clearly with its more open urn-bell shaped pendant flowers. It likes being up a little from stream edges where it can benefit from passive subterranean water flow from snowmelt. Very precious lil plant, seen in Nevada County Castle Peak area.

I stumbled onto a unique meadow that had some very unique plant alliances, and because of its lower elevation some rare scenarios as well. Beside the incredible number of lilies, it had a beautiful gathering of Yarrow, Arnica chamissonis, Sierra Mint, Swamp onion, but also a undescribed Angelica var, or subspecies. If anyone listened to to Crime Pays but botany doesn't podcast, there's an episode with renown botanist, Matt Berger, that found the undescribed species.

The expansive genus of Lupinus ranges from annuals, woody shrubby perennials and herbaceous perennials, but when we greet them in habitats with extreme environmental conditions we can see their adaptation. Lupinus breweri lives in Alpine or other high elevation habitats exposed to snow pack, high winds, and substrates that have sparse to open vegetation. It takes on a mat-groundcover form from high winds and enjoying any warmth it can collect from its substrate that absorbs intense sunlight. It's one of those grape soda scented lupines as I walked perhaps through 1.5 km of just this lovely species, I had such lovely aromatics of this lupine with skunk scented monkey flower.

It's always a treat to see the hemiparasitic meadow resident. For those new to this plant if you look closely an individual flower resembles an elephants head. Seen in Nevada County, CA, 8,000' elevation.

High peaks in the Sierra are starting to bloom . In order 2 photos of Eriogonum lobbii, and then the rare Eriogonum ovalifolium var eximium.

I barely made it to this location in Mono county as the sun was setting. I didn't know where to start or stop photographing these incredible plants.

My nursery primary intention is hyper local species. So to acquire a local propagule of Stream orchids took years of patience. It's easy from vegetative propagation and difficult for seed propagation, what's one to do. I do not dig up plants for my own gain with the only exception of development expansion. A local colony was in the a boundary for road improvements. These orchids are not rare to find in roadside seeps or ditches. After discussion with the road company I was given permission to salvage the rhizomes to distribute in my nursery. 2 years later I gave a nice 4x4 tray of healthy rhizomes.

These are plants I grew from seed. Since the first time I've become aware of this enchanting relationship it's been predictable observation so far in the 4-5 years of my awareness. After my second seasonal observation I started to take walks in the evening to various local locations to see if there's was affinities for certain penstemon species. I found these wasps on other Penstemon species that had similar corolla (flower tube) measurements.
Sometimes in a good year the whole plant will have there lil butts sticking out in just about every flower like a lil hotel. It's very precious.

I've seen this plant in many settings, but never in the scale such as this in Butte County CA.

There's a group of Penstemons that have really inflated looking flower tubes (corolla) that resemble guppies to me. The corolla lobes also have this pucker to them as if they wanna kiss their pollinator

For years i experimented with many flavors of Diplacus in the Sierra Nevada. All delicious in their own way but seldom thrive in Sierra Nevada clays. So even though the most common D. aurauntiacus did just fine, I finally just grew my own of my hyper local species grandiflorus. I enjoy the softer color and larger flowers.

Like many, I enjoy looking for geological substrate islands to notice plant affinities. For years I've been visiting lava flows locally to me, and knew there was this onion from the dried seed heads but finally this year got to witness these lovely bulbs.
The aroma coming from these bulbs was noticed before seen. It smelled like a soup kitchen. Once within sight, in roughly a 600 sq' area the area was packed with bulbs some areas do dense easily 30 flowering heads in a square foot, with flurry of Fritillary butterflies.