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. Still, there are some nice displays of flowers, some that are not commonly found, all easy to get to if you can walk over some uneven terrain.
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.
Note: Read about El Dorado County CNPS filing a lawsuit trying to protect this area.
Best Time to Go: March, April, and May.
Behind Cameron Park’s Bel Air Center: GPS: 4281282 E, 676913 N, 10 S
Go around to the back-side of the shopping area as if you were heading to the medical offices on the hill. There is a side road opposite an entrance to the shopping area; turn left onto the cul-de-sac and park at the barricade; make your way across the drainage channel and past the rip-rap boulders placed to keep the 4WD crowd at bay. You will see the "trail" heading slightly up the hill.
More Pine Hill Plants, Available to Almost Everyone!
As mentioned, it is too bad that it is so hard to keep a place available to those who may not be able to negotiate a muddy, rocky trail. But for those who can get across the ditch and manage some simple route finding (mostly figuring out which trail is the one you want), there are interesting plants to find.
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.
Yes, these plants developed to "expect" 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 do still grow and reproduce, but 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 US Representative John Doolittle has actually gone to some trouble to make it known that he thinks protecting plants is simply a waste of money, actually referring to these wonderful plants as weeds:
— from "Dam ideas lauded, plants not worthy..." Placerville Mountain Democrat , 8 Apr 03
Rhododendrons? Obviously this guy is poorly informed. Check Doolittle's "0" rating! from the League of Conservation Voters. It's a shame he was (narrowly) re-elected. He is no friend of the environment.
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, cheapskate locals 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 (Wyethia 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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