Another Youngs Rock Goodie
The flowers of Mimulus pulsiferae are almost radially symmetrical
More good R&E news from Youngs Rock. Today, Sabine, Molly, Jill, and I did the middle section of the Youngs Rock trail. In one of the meadows, we discovered lots of Mimulus pulsiferae in bloom. There was quite a bit of it at one end growing with Githopsis specularioides, Navarretia divaricata, and other belly plants. It seemed to be particular about open ground like we’ve seen it before. It was even coming up in several gopher mounds. My guess is it is not quite as rare as we thought (similar to Githopsis). It is just so tiny and ephemeral that one has to be very luck to catch it in bloom. That seems to be my 11th time through that meadow and I’ve never noticed it before. My last trip there was the first time we saw the Githopsis. There was lots of that in bloom today in the same meadow only (note the finished plant in the lower left of the photo).
Youngs Rock was our backup as we had hoped to get to Moon Point but did not make it. We hit snow at about 4600′, basically as soon as we were on the north-facing slope. We were maybe a mile from the trailhead when it was too deep to drive through. It probably looks that way on at least some of the trail. This upcoming hot weekend may dry out Youngs Rock more, but perhaps we’ll be able to get onto some of the middle trails. With only 2 1/2 weeks left until the NPSO Annual Meeting, it is pretty frustrating that we’ve only been able to get to 4 trails and that includes Tire Mountain which wasn’t even on the original list. I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll be able to get to Moon Point, Blair Lake, and Grasshopper in the next week. And hopefully Patterson has melted out by now. What a year!