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.
It's still a bit early to see the awesomeness to come, but the spring wildflowers are beginning to make a splash of color in the Sierra Mother Lode. With the record and near record amounts of rain in Northern California, the slopes are primed to produce a wildflower show to compete with the "super-blooms" taking place in the California deserts this year. We were exploring a portion of the southern Mother Lode in the vicinity of Mariposa and Coulterville yesterday, and I took my attention off the rocks for a few moments to catch some pictures of the early-blooming flowers. Above is a Fiddleneck (Amsinckia species), often one of the first of the wildflowers to bloom in this region. It can be poisonous to livestock, and yet was used as a food and medicine source by Native Americans.
Near the Pinetree-Josephine Mine we saw a number of Brodiaea, or Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum). These beautiful flowers grow from bulbs that were also an important source of food to the Native Americans of this region.
I don't know as many wildflower species as I should, as much as I appreciate their beauty. In a few places there were carpets of small yellow flowers (Goldfields, in the Lasthenia genus, thanks to Siera Nystrom in the comments).
Seeing some of the flowers growing in the usually poisonous serpentine soils reminded me that it is time to head up to the Red Hills soon, a Mother Lode locality known for a large number of endemic species.
As per Jane Strong in the comments, Orobanche fasciculata, clustered broomrape. Thanks for the identification!
And finally, the ever-present and always beautiful Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja species). There are some 200 species of this flower.
This is only the very beginning of what promises to be a wonderful year for wildflowers. I hope to be bringing many more such scenes to your attention in coming weeks!
I always thought that kaleidoscopes were named after someone named
Kaleid, but the authoritative source (Wikipedia, of course) indicates
that the name is a mixture of Latin terms that translates to
"observation of beautiful forms." Today I was observing just that
at the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern. I was also there less than a
week ago, and in the manner of a kaleidoscope, it is changing colors.
The Red Hills host a unique ecosystem quite unlike the oak woodlands of
the adjacent Sierra Nevada and Great Valley. The underlying rocks are
composed of serpentine and other ultramafic rocks, and the soils are
poor in many necessary nutrients, and rich in a number of toxic metals.
Few "normal" plants, most notably the grasses and oak trees, can live or
grow on these soils. Some plants merely tolerate the soils, and can
grow elsewhere (like the Poppies), but others are adapted to living on
the soils and nowhere else.
The foothills are semi-arid, and the seasonal lack of water is another
factor in the survival of plant species in the area. But when the water
comes, the hills explode with life. We've been in the grips of a
horrific drought for the last four years, but this year has brought
normal, even above-normal precipitation. In these few weeks of spring we
are getting the best wildflower show in years.
We've made three trips to the Red Hills in the last few weeks, and it has changed dramatically with each visit. The first visit was early, and there were just a few splashes of yellow here and there around the main parking area. By the second trip, the yellow flowers had expanded rapidly, with widespread areas covered by Goldfields and Monkey-flowers.
Our trip today revealed a vast expansion of the blue and purple flowers, primarily Blue Dicks (Brodiaea) and Bird's-eye Gilia. They provided a nice contrast to the red and brown rocks (rich in iron). You can literally think of the iron-rich rocks as rusting; they are actually green to black on fresh surfaces.
The rocks that are ultimately responsible for this wonderful scenery were once important for a different color: gold. The ultramafic rocks were closely associated with the Melones and related fault zones that were the conduits for highly mineralized fluids that worked their way towards the surface around 140 million years ago. As the chemical-rich water approached the surface, minerals precipitated out as quartz veins that hosted the gold that was so eagerly sought by miners. These rocks didn't have the gold, but it was near by. When the ores gave out, this landscape was abandoned and left behind for a century. It was the realm of garbage piles, shot-up abandoned automobiles, and off-road vehicle trackways.
It wasn't until the 1990s that people began to recognize the true value of this unique ecosystem. Volunteers cleaned up the messes, and the Bureau of Land Management reclassified the landscape as an "area of critical environmental concern", which is effectively a park designation. The "goldfields" today are the Goldfields flowers that appear after the rain falls. And all of the other wonderful colors that come just a few weeks later.
