Pine Hill Habitat: Cameron Park, El Dorado County
Key Reasons to Go: To see how hard it is to have a special place so open to abuse! From bike riders and ATV users to plain ol’ Midnight Dumpers who find it easier to toss a washing machine, old TVs and computer monitors out into the chaparral than dispose of them properly.
Note: the area described here is NOT part of the actual preserve, but rather some adjacent property. Still, it’s more accessible to see these flower species.
UPDATE May ’08: It’s time to throw in the towel on this one. Not only is the junk dumping never-ending, turning the few “visitable” areas into a wretched mess of broken glass, old tires, and yard clippings, the “hike” described below is all but gone now that a nursing home is built on the hillside now scraped free of those pesky protected plants.
Best Time to Go: March, April, and May.
Behind Cameron Park’s Bel Air Center: GPS: 4281282 E, 676913 N, 10 S
More Pine Hill Plants, Available to Almost Everyone!
If you are a plant fan from El Dorado County or the Sacramento area, you might already know that Pine Hill has a special collection of plants that are listed Rare or Endangered. These plants are special for several reasons, not the least of those being their adaptation to the chaparral environment: cool rainy winters and hot dry summers (the definition of the Mediterranean climate) with the addition of a natural fire regimen.
The Stebbins morning-glory and Wyethia mentioned below are Pine Hill endemics that are not easy to find on the othe rside of the hill but are easy to see in the vacant properties near the hospital buildings.
Yes, these plants developed to endure a fire every now and then. Fires clear out accumulations of dead underbrush, returning nutrients to the soil. Fire removes the weedy plants that compete for limited stored water. Fire actually increases the bloom for the following year. Now that Cameron Park is a developed area, fires are a thing of the past. Still, of course the plants grow and reproduce, but the plants are short and usually single-flowered. Across the streeet where there is a slash pilke that has been burned, the Wyethia are tall and luxurient, multiple flowers per plant.
It’s a bit of a trick to get people who don’t pay attention to plants to understand that these plants deserve protection. It’s bad enough that people dump their trash here, and it’s worse that motorized abuse continues to happen. But what is really insane is that now EX US Representative John Doolittle actually wanted to make it known that he thinks protecting plants is simply a waste of money, actually referring to these wonderful plants as weeds:
"Who cares about those plants?" Doolittle asked. "I've never met anybody. It's just an absurd surrogate for the real agenda. As long as they've got to set aside all this land, why don't they make lemonade with lemons and plant some rhododendrons or azaleas?" Doolittle asked."
— from "Dam ideas lauded, plants not worthy..." Placerville Mountain Democrat , 8 Apr 03
Redbud (Cercis occidentalis) is everywhere. This handsome member of the Bean and Pea family (Fabaceae) is attractive three seasons of the year: eye-catching pink blossoms for Spring, nice green leaves for Summer, and the leaves turn deep red-brown in Autumn.
The flowers of redbud are unusual, so do take a few minutes to inspect them. Later you can check out lupine flowers to see the characteristics that put it into a group with a tongue-twisting name of Caesalpiniodeae a division of Fabaceae that has mostly tropical members. What is different? The upper petals are inside the lateral petals.
The Endangered Stebbins's morning-glory (Calystegia stebbinsii) can be identified by its unusual leaf form. This morning-glory was only discovered in the late ’70s by then-local G. Ledyard Stebbins.
This plant is really limited to very few places, and sadly, one of these places is an area used by dirt bikes and 4WD folks who run around on the land for their “wreck-reation”. Obviously these people know nothing about the ordinary-looking little morning-glory that is growing just inches off their track. In other parts of this same area, cheapskates back their trucks into the greenery to off-load everything from yard clippings to old tires and washing machines. It is a shame that there is little done to stop these abuses.
El Dorado Mule-Ear (was Wyethia reticulata, now Agnorhiza reticulata) is a Pine Hill specialty that actually thrives under fire conditions. The seeds germinate after the quick burn of chaparral vegetation and the population doubles or better. While the typical plants you find are about 12 inches or so, there is a burn-pile (across from the Marshall Hospital and close to the highway) that is surrounded by abundant plants that are more like 36 inches tall, with multiple blooms per stem. It is interesting to first look at the nearby plants that simply get along and grow short stems with single flowers, then look around the burn pile and see the same plant now growing tall and with multiple heads!
The blue Lemmon’s ceanothus (C. lemmonii) is one of the visual highlights of this area. When it comes into bloom along with the redbud, it is a terrific sight.
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