New Populations of Native Plants found in the Delta!

Scutellaria lateriflora

Scutellaria lateriflora

This last weekend Rivers for Change and the California Native Plant Society teamed up in the Delta to look for some Native Plants and we had some great finds on the trip – 2 populations of Hibiscus lasiocarps var. occidentalis, 1 population of Lathyrus jepsonii var. jepsonii, and one population of Scutellaria lateriflora. The Scutellaria was a really big find because there are only 12 known populations of this plant in the whole state! Also, it’s never been seen flowering in California in July, so we now that the blooming period is longer than previously known. Finally, the Scutellaria has never been seen on that little island before. The California Natural Diversity Database has an old record of the plant collected from Bouldin Island in 1892: http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/new_detail.pl?UC104313&YF=0. Bouldin Island is about 2 miles south of where we found the Scutellaria, so this was almost certainly a new population!

Pretty exciting eh!?