Vascular Floristic Study of the Piute Mountains, Kern County, California

<p>This study describes the vascular flora of the Piute Mountains, located at the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada in Kern County, California. The study area covers ca. 543 square km (210 square mi), with elevations ranging from 777 m (2,550 ft) to 2,562 m (8,406 ft) at Piute Peak. Though situated in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion, the Piute Mountains lie near the Mojave Desert, Central Valley, and southern California mountains, resulting in a highly diverse, unique flora with plant taxa from each of these regions co-occurring. The study area encompasses varied topography with an assortment of geologic features including gabbro, mafic-volcanic greenstone, schist-gneiss, limestone and granite. While there was no prior checklist for the range, numerous botanists have showed interest in the area resulting in 1,955 historical herbarium collections representing 704 minimum-rank taxa (species, subspecies, varieties, named hybrids). Despite previous botanical work, there were large spatial and temporal gaps in the collection history of the Piute Mountains, and many species collected in the past had not been recently documented. Field work for this study was conducted between March and September in both 2022 and 2023, resulting in 98 days of field work, 1,857 voucher collections, and 909 minimum-rank taxa in 96 families. This study resulted in 205 taxa that were previously undocumented in the range, including seven Kern County records, numerous range extensions, and the discovery of Lasthenia glabrata subsp. coulteri (CRPR 1B.1) which had no prior records in the Piute Mountains area. Each taxon entry in the annotated checklist contains information on abundance, vegetation type, habitat, representative voucher collection(s), and any additional location or identification notes. A concise review of the natural history of the area is presented including geology, climate, human activity, botanical history, and a description of the vegetation and habitat types.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Botany, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Botany

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Matzke, Courtney

Contributors dc:contributor

• Naomi Fraga
• Mare Nazaire

• California
• Piute Mountains
• Kern County
• Mafic-volcanic greenstone
• Vegetation
• Botany

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/791

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1813