Key Reasons to Go: This is a nice walk to see Rare and Endangered plants on gabbro soil. April through May there are dozens of species to be seen, headed by the Magnificent Seven plus One. Read what the U.S. Fish & Wildlife says about this area.

Best Time to Go: April and May would be the nicest. The spring grass is green, the oaks are leafing out, and there will be dozens of species of flowers all along the paved road to the top of the hill.

*Note: a nice walk if you can handle a moderately steep grade for about a mile. The road is paved, but the uphill grade will slow some people.

Directions: From Hwy 50, take North Shingle Road about 3 miles to Green Valley Road, then take a left to Rescue. About a half mile past Rescue Elementary School, watch for Ulenkamp Road on the right. Turn onto Ulenkamp and follow for half a mile to a sign that says, "End of County Road". Take the left turn just there, onto Pine Hill Road. Continue about a mile to a paved drive with a locked gate and a little parking strip. There is a walk-through gate that is open to the public. The road is paved virtually all the way to the top, and you are invited to walk up the road. It's only a one-mile hike, a little steep at first but it gets better as you go.

GPS Users: Here's a Google map. Here's a 76k PDF plant list.

Pine Hill is a curious little bump in the Sierra foothills landscape. From afar it looks like any other local hill, noticed more for the crowning collection of communication structures. But take the time to walk the walk and you will see what makes Pine Hill an exceptional little hill: it is home to a surprising collection of endemic plants that are found in either few other or no other place as naturally occurring native plants! In fact most of these Pine Hill specialties were only discovered within the last forty years.

To be fair, a few of the Pine Hill plants are not terribly noticeable. The Sierra bedstraw requires a search and getting down on one's knees to inspect it if you find it. Layne’s Ragwort looks a liitle beat even at iuts best; On the other end of the spectrum, Pine Hill flannelbush is reason enough to go to the top of the hill; it is gorgeous and unmistakable; this one shrub (right) engulfs a tall fence inside a chain-link fence around a transmission station.

One might think that such a special place would be protected and prized by local residents. Sadly that is not quite the case.

Pine Hill is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM); in 1996, after a survey of the Pine Hill area the BLM announced that there needed to be additional properties added to insure the continuation of the plants. In an odd reaction to that, then-local US Representative John Doolittle found some reason to do something good while hating the fact that he had to be involved! He ”found“ some extra millions in some other US district and tossed it in as a way to help the county fund the land purchase.

“It is bad enough that the federal government is holding the county's water supply hostage
to save a bunch of weeds,” said Doolittle.

Unfortunately I can no longer find his subsequent comments and documentation about how El Dorado County should, but I am generally accurate here, “... put in irrigation and plant rhododendrons!”  This pretty much proves that Doolittle has zero awareness of plant habitats, not to mention the craziness of his complaining about EDCs water problems and then later suggesting an irrigation system for non-native plants. Great job, John.

Update: I am happy to report that Doolittle is no longer “representing” this area.

Local Lack of Awareness

It is also instructive to learn that a local developer once wrote to the town newspaper to offer to donate $5000 (yes, five thousand) to buy a tanker of herbicide and kill the rare and endangered plants that were hindering his plan to build upscale “view homes” on the slopes of Pine Hill. He asked, “Has anyone ever actually seen any of these plants?“

Update: Developers keep trimming away at the area near the Pine Hill Preserve. They bulldozed a large parcel in the Cameron Park area, removing a substantial number of Ceanothus roderickii plants while developing that habitat into a nursing home.

Pine Hill is only a few miles away from Hwy 50 and Shingle Springs. It is easy to find, open to the public, free of any charges for parking or walking, and even if the flowers aren’t blooming you can still walk to the top, sit down on a rock and have lunch while looking out over the communities below, a look at Folsom Lake to the west, and the Sierra at your back.

In the Spring you will find many great flowers, including a hillside covered with Chinese houses (Collinsia heterophylla), fragrant blossom spikes on the buckeyes (Aesculus californica), and lots of opportunities to stop to catch your breath and look at a variety of small roadside plants. As you near the top look for the wonderful combination of paintbrush and blue Lemmon’s ceanothus.

The Seven, plus One:

Pine Hill flannel bush | El Dorado bedstraw | Layne’s butterweed | Pine Hill ceanothus
El Dorado mule-ears | Red Hills soap root | Stebbins’s morning-glory | Bisbee Peak rush-rose

Pine Hill Flannelbush
Calflora: Fremontodendron californicum ssp. decumbens

Pine Hill Flannelbush, Fremontodendron decumbens, is the prettiest of the rare plants of Pine Hill; this one alone is worth the trip. There are only a few plants that will be found by the casual visitor, the biggest at the crown of the hill, appropriate as that seems. The low-growing plants have small, apricot-color flowers, unlike their counterpart, Fremontodendron californicum (shown, right), which grows as an erect shrub with larger, lemon-yellow flowers and is found on steeper hillsides (note that it does not grow on Pine Hill). The Pine Hill version has numerous flowers that are almost waxy, and leaves that are covered with stellate hairs. It is a simply beautiful plant. Interesting to note, it is a relative of cocoa! Yes, breakfast cocoa, also in the family Sterculiaceae*. Of course this is not a plant that anyone should collect, either as flowers or cuttings! Rare they are, but you can buy it from Las Pilitas Nursery.

*Note: Malvaceae is a name change from the previous Sterulicaceae. Read more...

Layne's ragwort
Calflora: Packera layneae (was Senecio layneae)

Packera layneae is listed as a Threatened species. It is a member of Asteraceae and has both disc flowers and ray flowers, but this one typically only has ±(5)8 ray flowers, making it a raggedy ragwort. The flowers always look like they have been battered by wind, but nope, that's the flower.

The plant grows in several places along the road, but it is all around the top of the hill in open sunny areas. (It also grows in the Cameron Park section of the Pine Hill Reserve, as well as at Traverse Creek, a serpentine area near Georgetown.

El Dorado Bedstraw
Calflora: Galium californicum ssp. sierrae

Nobody promised that every rare plant would bowl you over with startling beauty. The tiny Sierra bedstraw, for example, will likely go unseen even as you walk right past it on the way to the top of the hill. You almost need a guide to know where to stop for a look at these pale little flowers among the other leaves and plants. Still, it is deserving of attention and protection. Why? Check the photo on the right! The raw land was sold to a home builder who hired a contractor who didn't understand that zero mitigation meant that there was no way to mitigate! As a result, the property was bulldozed when the developer interpreted "zero mitigation" as "no mitigation required!"

El Dorado Mule-Ears
Calflora: Agnorhiza reticulata*

These are going to bloom later than many of the other flowers on Pine Hill so it's worth going in June or July to see the El Dorado mule-ear. It is a perennial, and spreads by rhizomes; when you find it, you will probably find many. It is a Pine Hill endemic, growing on the gabbro soils around Pine Hill and in the Cameron Park section of the reserve. You will se some as you walk up the paved road of the maine section, but you will see more if you go to the Cameron Park area and explore the areas mentioned on this page.

Of interest, this plant, like many chaparral plants, actually depends on fire for its best survival. There is a burn pile on another part of the preserve where the Wyethia are two to three times the size of those seen on the northeastern slopes of Pine Hill where fires are controlled for the property owners.

Red Hills soap root
Calflora: Chlorogalum grandiflorum

A member of the lily family, soap root is generally common, but Red Hills soap root has larger flowers: "grandiflorum". You will have no trouble finding the wavy leaf clusters, but don't expect to see the flowers unless you come around late afternoon to dusk! The flowers open almost as soon as it gets dark; it's moth pollinated.

The soap root name is well-deserved, as the fibrous roots can produce a soapy lather. Native Americans used to crush the roots to scatter on water to stun fish for easy pickin's.

Pine Hill Ceanothus
Calflora: Ceanothus roderickii

Also known as Roderick’s ceanothus, this particular ceanothus is like a poor cousin to the much more obvious blue Lemmon’s ceanothus (Calflora: Ceanothus lemmonii, shown at right). While many forms of ceanothus are erect shrubs, and even Lemmon’s, while hardly statuesque, is much showier in both color and size, Roderick’s ceanothus is a prostrate, heavy-duty shrub that is typically growing sprawling over low boulders. The flowers are usually white (but can have a pale blue tint) and the leaves are stout and small.

There are a few plants on the way up the hill, and a few at the top, but it is much more easily found along the trail in the Cameron Park section of the Pine Hill Reserve.

Stebbins’s morning-glory
Calflora: Calystegia stebbinsii

First off, this is a great example of how being aware of what things should look like can lead to discovery! This particular plant looks—at first—like just another bindweed, easy to dismiss. But G. Ledyard Stebbins thought it was different. When he collected some samples and sent them off for verification, he was told that he had found a new species! And this was not found in some dark, unexplored forest, it was found along Hwy 50 in Cameron Park, probably within ear-shot of the traffic! Of interest, it doesn't grow on Pine Hill, per se, but grows within the Pine Hill Preserve.

The main thing that sets this species apart is the leaf: usually a morning-glory has heart-shaped leaves. Not this one. “Leaf: lobes 7–9, 7–55 mm, deep, palmate, linear, middle longest; margin generally rolled under.”—Jepson

This plant is CNPS listed as extremely rare and Federally listed as Endangered, and a visit to the Cameron Park area near (but not a part of the Preserve) shows why: not just within the sound of the highway, the habitat is now a network of motorcycle tracks and is more and more used as both a dumping ground by people too lazy to take their trash to the dump, or by 4WD owners learning to drive!

Bisbee Peak rushrose
Calflora: Helianthemum suffrutescens

The “plus one” flower. rushrose is not limited to Pine Hill (in fact I'm not sure it even grows on the hill, but I do know it grows near the Cameron Park area) but it is here and in generally few other adjacent county areas. It is neither a rush (Juncus) nor a rose (Rosaceae), but does have stems that look like rushes and a flower that might look rose-like if you are satisfied with a yellow flower and plenty of stamens as a substitute for a real wild rose. It is also more easily found in the vicinity of the Stebbins‘s morning-glory in Cameron Park.

Compare this area with PIne Hill plants in Cameron Park.

[back to top]