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Botanist's hunt turns up floral treasures
By Mark Wheeler / Hi-Desert Star
JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK - Recent field work in Joshua Tree National Park has added 100 new names to the species list, and among them are three plants variously listed in the state and federal records as either threatened or endangered.
Park botanist Tasha LaDoux is pleased with the discovery of the distinguished species. Not only do the specimens embody some hope the plants could make a comeback in numbers someday, their presence in the park adds an extra eminence to its already noteworthy plant diversity.
By her reckoning, the park has approximately 58 species of plants that are considered rare, based on California Native Plant Society standards. Such plants are quite valuable for the information they might reveal about plant adaptations and geographical distributions of different plant types.
Exactly why some plants thrive and some fail in a particular area is one important subject of a botanist's never-ending research, and rare plants can sometimes hold clues to variations and anomalies in either plant physiology or ecosystem history that may be undetected in more common species.
For as valuable as these rare plants are to the park's highly detailed understanding of its plantscape, LaDoux observes that all the plants in the park are important sources of ecological information.
Ultimately, LaDoux wants to produce a definitive guide for all park plants. Each species would be identified by photo, and by botanical and distributional descriptions.
From her point of view, such a comprehensive inventory is vital to the park's management interests. “You can't manage something if you don't know what's there,” she remarked matter of factly.
“Floristics” is the name of the kind of research LeDoux conducts in the park and that she says should be expanded to whatever extent possible.
A short definition of “floristics” describes it as the documentation of plant species in an area. A more detailed version reveals more of the research value of floristics by stating that it is: “The study of ecological and geographic distribution of plants.”
How a species fits into a local environment and how it has come to be there is much of what LaDoux wants her work to explain about the plants in JTNP. She asks where the species alliances are, and tries to map migration routes that different plants have followed through time.
With this information she hopes to add detail to plant identification records, and also to provide information to data bases that track histories of species changes and extinctions in specific areas.
All of this can help her park to, for instance, identify the kinds of threats to its ecosystems which might be mitigated before it's too late.
Owing to the fact that virtually all life on the planet depends on the plant kingdom's ability to convert solar energy to metabolic energy, the history of plant activity in JTNP will tell much about the history of non-plant organisms there as well.
Evidence of plant distribution patterns can be used to determine the park's climatological history and even illuminate some of its geological history in the bargain.
Although the work can be painstakingly tedious, such as when the botanist counts and accounts for every single plant found in a designated area, LaDoux says the work is often as exciting as any treasure hunt. Take her discovery last year of Erigeron parishii, as an example.
Not seen since 1939 in the park, the little daisy is a federally endangered species. LaDoux and a friend were thrilled to find a few specimens last year.
What really excited them, though, was the discovery of another small population this year at some distance from the ones they previously found. Maybe not the mother-lode of all treasure troves, for a botanist, such a find is still as good as gold.
Park botanist Tasha LaDoux is pleased with the discovery of the distinguished species. Not only do the specimens embody some hope the plants could make a comeback in numbers someday, their presence in the park adds an extra eminence to its already noteworthy plant diversity.
By her reckoning, the park has approximately 58 species of plants that are considered rare, based on California Native Plant Society standards. Such plants are quite valuable for the information they might reveal about plant adaptations and geographical distributions of different plant types.
Exactly why some plants thrive and some fail in a particular area is one important subject of a botanist's never-ending research, and rare plants can sometimes hold clues to variations and anomalies in either plant physiology or ecosystem history that may be undetected in more common species.
For as valuable as these rare plants are to the park's highly detailed understanding of its plantscape, LaDoux observes that all the plants in the park are important sources of ecological information.
Ultimately, LaDoux wants to produce a definitive guide for all park plants. Each species would be identified by photo, and by botanical and distributional descriptions.
From her point of view, such a comprehensive inventory is vital to the park's management interests. “You can't manage something if you don't know what's there,” she remarked matter of factly.
“Floristics” is the name of the kind of research LeDoux conducts in the park and that she says should be expanded to whatever extent possible.
A short definition of “floristics” describes it as the documentation of plant species in an area. A more detailed version reveals more of the research value of floristics by stating that it is: “The study of ecological and geographic distribution of plants.”
How a species fits into a local environment and how it has come to be there is much of what LaDoux wants her work to explain about the plants in JTNP. She asks where the species alliances are, and tries to map migration routes that different plants have followed through time.
With this information she hopes to add detail to plant identification records, and also to provide information to data bases that track histories of species changes and extinctions in specific areas.
All of this can help her park to, for instance, identify the kinds of threats to its ecosystems which might be mitigated before it's too late.
Owing to the fact that virtually all life on the planet depends on the plant kingdom's ability to convert solar energy to metabolic energy, the history of plant activity in JTNP will tell much about the history of non-plant organisms there as well.
Evidence of plant distribution patterns can be used to determine the park's climatological history and even illuminate some of its geological history in the bargain.
Although the work can be painstakingly tedious, such as when the botanist counts and accounts for every single plant found in a designated area, LaDoux says the work is often as exciting as any treasure hunt. Take her discovery last year of Erigeron parishii, as an example.
Not seen since 1939 in the park, the little daisy is a federally endangered species. LaDoux and a friend were thrilled to find a few specimens last year.
What really excited them, though, was the discovery of another small population this year at some distance from the ones they previously found. Maybe not the mother-lode of all treasure troves, for a botanist, such a find is still as good as gold.
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