Welcome to one of the most unique ecosystems and habitats in California's wealth of incredible places. It was ignored initially by miners in the region because it had no gold (the Mother Lode is a scant two miles away). It was more recently ignored because it had no grass for grazing and poor soils incapable of growing anything "useful". The Bureau of Land Management, tasked in its early days of giving away land by way of the Homestead Act couldn't give the free acreage away at all. All but ignored by federal government, the absentee owner, it became an unofficial garbage dump, unauthorized shooting range, and unsanctioned off-road vehicle route.
Why were the soils so poor in nutrients and toxic to plant growth? It was the underlying rocks: the serpentine and other ultramafic rocks associated with the Melones Fault in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. The soils developed on these rocks were severely deficient in important macronutrients, and contaminated (so-to-speak) by toxic metals. Most plants, including most grasses, cannot survive in these soils. Some select species tolerate the soils, and a few rare ones thrive. It is literally a different world, and as you can see in the picture above, the change is abrupt, as the prairie grasses and oak woodland suddenly give way to ceanothus or buckbrush and gray pine.
By the late 1980s the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of the Red Hills area, belatedly recognized (with the encouragement and assistance of community and environmental activists) the unique nature of the ecosystem here, and declared it an "Area of Critical Environmental Concern", the kind of a designation that only a bureaucrat could love. It turned out that this landscape contained a large variety of endemic species found almost nowhere else, including a unique fish species, the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus). Clean-ups were organized, and minimal tourists facilities (trails, parking areas, vault toilets, and a nature trail) were constructed.
Bitter root (Lewisia rediviva)
For much of the year, especially in the hot dry summer, there is little to recommend about the Red Hills. Most of the plants are dead and gone to seed. But for a few months during the cooler wetter spring season, the hills come alive. It turned out that many of the plants adapted to living in these soils produce a vivid display of color when they bloom.
California Goldfields (Lasthenia californica) and scattered poppies
We took a bit longer to make our way up to the Red Hills this year, in large part because there hasn't been more than a spatter of rain since December. We are in the midst of another year of lingering drought. But in the end we decided to have a look, and although it came nowhere near the pyrotechnics of color of past years, there was more than enough to make for a satisfying excursion.
Poppy, a flower that seems able to grow in just about any environment California can fling at it.
Enjoy a little bit of color!
Monkeyflower (Erythranthe sp.)
Blue Dicks (Brodiaea)
The parking area and trailhead at Red Hills ACEC
Poppy sp. and Blue Dick (Brodiaea)
Serpentine
The Red Hills got their name from the red soils that develop on the ultramafic rocks, including serpentine. The rocks are rich in iron, thus the red color, but fresh surfaces of the rocks are generally shades of green, as can be seen above.
It used to be a "junk" landscape...the kind of place where locals dumped their garbage and shot up old cars. Off-road vehicles ran roughshod over the relatively barren slopes. It wasn't private property. It was owned by the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management, whose original goal was to give the land away, but in the end no one wanted it. The land, with poor soils nearly useless for agriculture, languished.
But times and attitudes change. There was a reason for the poor nutrient levels in the soils, and why grass, that would have at least allowed for grazing, failed to thrive. The underlying bedrock was composed of ultramafic rocks like serpentine, dunite and peridotite. The rocks are rich in iron and magnesium, with significant amounts of toxic elements like nickel or chrome. Only the hardiest of plants can tolerate these chemical conditions, although there are a few that can thrive in this harsh environment. When the ultramafic rocks are weathered, the iron is released to react with oxygen in the atmosphere to form natural rust minerals like hematite and limonite. The brightly colored soils earned the locality its name, the Red Hills. They form the ridges west of Chinese Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode between Highways 108 and 132.
By the 1990s public efforts to protect and preserve the unique biology and geology of the region succeeded when the BLM declared 7,100 acres of the region (about 11 square miles) an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. Trash and garbage were removed, trails were laid out, and a parking area constructed. Regulations limited off-road use and target shooting. The region finally received the recognition it needed.
The "park" includes seven very rare species of plants, including two endemics, species found nowhere else in the world (the Red Hills Vervain, and the Red Hills Ragwort). The unique nature of the flora is immediately apparent when approaching the area from the west. The environment of scattered oaks and widespread grasslands gives way abruptly to Buckbrush and Gray Pines. Grass is practically non-existent, unable to thrive on the poor soils. The region has a decidedly barren look.
But then the rains arrive. In the late winter and early spring, the wildflowers burst forth in a display of bright colors. Wildflowers in other parts of the Mother Lode are often hidden by the high-growing grasses. With grass a much diminished species, the wildflowers blaze forth.
We went up into the Red Hills today to see how things have progressed now that we've had a wet year. It's a bit early, but a fair number of flowers were visible on the slopes, including Monkey Flower, Golden Poppy, Brodiaea, and Five-spot. The lichens provided even more color.
The intermittent creek running along the main road through the park sported a healthy flow of water allowing us a chance to see the other unique species in the ACEC: the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus), which is a fish, not a bug.
The Red Hills Roach is a subspecies of the California Roach, a member of the minnow family. It's only found in a few drainages within the ACEC and nowhere else in the world. The streams run dry for much of the year, but small seeps and springs maintain permanent pools where a few fish can survive. There were serious concerns about whether the fish would be able to survive the horrific drought of the last decade, but they managed as they have through time.
I got a poor picture of one of the roaches, but a teaching colleague of mine, Ryan Hollister, has posted some underwater shots of the fish on the move.
The Red Hills are wet from months of above-average rainfall, and the plants are growing fast, and will be blooming in profusion in the next few weeks. If you can spare a moment, head into the hills and give the ACEC a chance to impress. It is a truly unique environment found nowhere else in the world.
We saw exactly two poppies blooming. In a few weeks there will be thousands.
It has a clumsy name that only a bureaucrat could love, but the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is a fascinating place in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. It was for decades a sullied hidden treasure, used for dumping and target shooting. But as biologists and geologists started to study the region, they found a unique biological island in the normally oak-studded woodlands of the Mother Lode.
The uniqueness of the area was tied to the underlying soil, developed on the serpentine and ultramafic rocks of the Foothills Terrane, slices of the ocean crust and rocks from deep in the Earth's mantle that had been added to the western edge of North America some 200 million years ago. Serpentine soils lack many of the nutrients required by "normal" plants like grass and oak, but are loaded with metals that are actually poisonous to plants as well. Plants that survive in this strange other-worldly land have to be tolerant of this harsh chemical environment. Some of them are very rare, and a few are endemic, found nowhere else in the world. Because of the prevalence of iron, the soils are usually a deep reddish brown, giving the hills their name.
This was the single Monkey-flower we found. There will be many more!
The delineation is sharp. When one turns off of LaGrange Road onto Red Hills Road one sees oak woodlands and open fields thick with grass. But only about a mile in, the oak and grass suddenly give way to Ceanothus shrubs and Gray Pine. Grass is almost nonexistent, with various flower species making up the ground cover. Much of the year the ground cover is dead and dry, but for a few weeks in the spring, the hills burst into color, and there is a spectacular show of wildflowers, dominated by Monkey-flowers and Poppies.
February was an incredibly dry month, no doubt delaying the onset of the spring flower show, but the heavy rains of March have left the soils wet, and sprouts are popping up everywhere. We were there today to look things over, and we could see that land is about to burst forth in another week or two.
I wandered over to the creek to see if the fish were around. The Red Hills host a rare and endangered subspecies of the California Roach, the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus). The fish were for a short time thought to be extinct when the extended drought dried up the intermittent creeks that they called home. But a few spring-fed pools persisted during the driest times, and the fish are doing okay.
They were in a frenzy of feeding or breeding, or just doing some heavy partying when I found them. I caught some video below. All in all, life is returning in the foothills during these brief weeks before the hot dry times come again all too soon.
With some careful selective editing one can make it look like the superbloom is continuing in the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern, but alas the bloom is beginning to fade. We drove up there today and I was standing in this field of Monkeyflowers when a car pulled up, looking for the Red Hills. I was said he was in the middle of it and he seemed mildly disappointed, but his family jumped out for some pictures anyway. The flowers were there, concentrated along Six-bit Creek, but it just wasn't the same show. Was I disappointed? Of course not!
A bit of searching revealed some Paintbrush on the trail above the river.
One thing that changes as the flowers fade is that the rocks become more visible. If you haven't seen some of my posts in the past, the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern (only a bureaucrat could come up with a name like that!) is a landscape of about 7,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills just west of the village of Chinese Camp. It exposes ultramafic rocks (serpentine and peridotite derived from the Earth's mantle) with a chemistry that precludes the development of fertile soils (they lack some critical nutrients, but include a few toxic elements as well). As a result most normal foothill species cannot thrive. Because of the relatively barren look of the place, it was abused for years as a motorcycle riding area and dumping ground. But hard soil conditions force plants to adapt. It turned out that the Red Hills sheltered dozens of serpentine tolerant plants that are rare elsewhere, and some of the plants are endangered, in part because their habitat is so limited.
Volunteers cleaned up the garbage, and the Bureau of Land Management began developing trails and a picnic area along with interpretive signage. For most of the year, the rocks lie exposed to the intense sunlight, but during the rainy season, the area can explode with unique wildflower species. We caught the early part of the season in March (the Alpha), and today we were witnessing the end (the Omega).
I'm an amateur at identifying birds, but I've gotten better at it and can identify most of the common ones in my area. But with wildflowers I'm hopeless. My memory for wildflower names is barely better than Dory in Finding Nemo. The nice thing about that, I guess, is that every year it is like discovering the species for the first time (even if it is the tenth). I thought I'd never seen the White Hyacinth before (below), but I'll bet my old albums of the Red Hills are full of pictures of them.
It isn't just the flowers that can be rare and unique. This arid landscape also hosts an endangered vertebrate species as well, and it's a surprise. It's a fish. That's extraordinary, knowing how hot and dry this place becomes in the summer. Somehow, the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus) survives in a few small spring-fed pools in some of the creeks in the preserve. There were some serious concerns about whether they could survive the extended drought, but they did okay. I got some clumsy pictures on our earlier trip (below).
The Red Hills Roach, an endemic fish found only in this part of the Sierra Mother Lode
There isn't much time left before the flowers begin to fade away for another hot summer. All is not lost of course, as the wildflower season will probably last all summer and into the fall, since it is going to take about that long to melt all the snow that has fallen this year. If you want to see flowers in the coming months, just head higher into the mountains! But stop by the Red Hills for a few moments to see rocks that began their journey many tens of miles, maybe hundreds of miles down in the crust and mantle of Planet Earth. They are fascinating.
