On July 20, 2013 I drove to an area of the Siskiyou Mts. outside the town of Orleans from Los Angeles-- the 11 hours is okay if I can leave before dawn and arrive in the afternoon. Arriving a few hours before the sun went down, there was some time to collect from a population …
Black Lassic
Black Lassic is one peak among the Lassics of Trinity County and is characterized by outcrops of serpentine, mudstone, and sandstone surrounded by coniferous forest. Pyrola crypta is a species that grows predominantly under Pseudotsuga in this area. It is very similar in appearance to P. picta but can be distinguished by its unusually long sepals …
Buzz pollination
A bumble bee buzzes the inflorescences of a Pyrola picta specimen I collected from an area near the Marble Mountain wilderness in Siskiyou County. Oddly, this is the only specimen I've seen thus far with highly reduced female function. You can see gynoecial structures appear to be absent or highly reduced in the flowers of …
Pyrola aphylla
Pyrola aphylla is a widespread species in western North America, uncommon in the Rocky Mountains, but relatively abundant in mountains closer to the Pacific Ocean. In southern California, this species often produces very pink flowers and stems. In this image you can see some of the anthers emerging from the corolla as it opens. In …
San Gorgonio Wilderness
On May 18th, I made a backpacking trip with Mary Jolles and Tommy Stoughton to Dollar Lake in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. Mount San Gorgonio was the southern-most glaciated area in North America during the last glacial maximum and Dollar Lake sits at about 2800 m., about 700 m. below the peak of Mt. San …
Northern Range Limit: Bella Coola
One of the northernmost collection of Pyrola picta is from the Bella Coola Valley in British Columbia, Canada. This valley terminates at the town of Bella Coola on Queen Charlotte Sound. The entire valley is surrounded by glaciers and the sea is colored by glacial till. In 2006, my brother, Karl, and I traveled to …
Transverse and Peninsular Ranges
Much of southern California is arid, with seasonal monsoonal rain. Pockets of relatively mesic habitat occur in the mountain ranges adjacent arid lowlands. Montane forests trap ocean fog or monsoonal precipitation, providing conditions suitable for northern temperate plants such as Pyrola dentata and P. aphylla. Although less common, P. picta also occurs in southern California, …
Sequoia National Forest
The southern end of the Sierra Nevada in California runs through Sequoia National Forest. On June 11-12, 2011, graduate student Naomi Fraga brought me on a trip to the area to collect Mimulus species (Phrymaceae). This forest features some great habitat (Fig. 1) for mycoheterotrophic Ericaceae as well, including Pyrola dentata. The plants I collected …
Cascadian species of Pyrola
While trying to understand relationships among populations of Pyrola picta by comparing DNA sequences, I came across a group of sequences that seemed to be divergent from the rest. The DNA sequences corresponded, at least loosely, to populations in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, Oregon, and northern California (Fig. 1) of plants that look like …
North & south of the Snake River Basin
In August 2008, I flew to Boise with Jason Schmidt (now at the Bureau of Environmental Services, City of Portland) to begin a visit to mountains south and north of the Snake River Basin in southern Idaho. We first drove south to Jarbidge, Nevada along very dusty roads, unreliably marked after we left ID-51 on …
Jolles Lab 