Date of Award

2024

Degree Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Botany, PhD

Program

Botany

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Travis Columbus

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Naomi Fraga

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Mare Nazaire

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2024 Courtney Matzke

Keywords

California, Piute Mountains, Kern County, Mafic-volcanic greenstone, Vegetation

Subject Categories

Botany

Abstract

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.

ISBN

9798382372709

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Botany Commons

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