Chapter Meeting – November 2023

“Stark Beauty: Klamath-Siskiyou Serpentines”   Guest Speaker:  Julie Kierstead

Monday, November 13, 2023

7:30 p.m. – Online Zoom Presentation preregister HERE

The Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains of northwest California and southwest Oregon are the largest serpentine area in North America. We will look at three distinct areas of serpentine geology in NW California: the Josephine Ophiolite, the Rattlesnake Creek Terrane, and the Trinity Ultramafic Sheet, and learn about their similarities and their differences. We will take a landscape level look at each of these areas, and touch on their endemic plant species, many of which are rare. See this Preview

Bio:     Julie served as Forest Botanist for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest from 1989-2019, conducting rare plant surveys and managing the botany program for that 2.2-million-acre federal property. She received a B.S. in Botany from Oregon State University a long time ago and an M.S. in Biology from Northern Arizona University. She then served as the first Curator for The Berry Botanic Garden – Seed Bank for Rare and Endangered Plants of the Pacific Northwest, in Portland, Oregon. Focusing on the Klamath Range flora of NW California, she has collaborated on publishing new taxa and biogeographical/floristic info; older papers are under the name Julie Kierstead Nelson. She recently coauthored the book, Wildflowers of California’s Klamath Mountains. Julie is a California Certified Consulting Botanist and serves on the Calflora board of directors, as well as the CNPS rare plant program advisory committee . She teaches field workshops in NW California for the Jepson Herbarium workshop series, with co-teacher Heath Bartosh and others. Her interests are in floristics of the Klamath Ranges and to a lesser extent, the southern Cascades. Genera of particular interest include: Sedum, Adiantum, Neviusia, Silene, Vaccinium, Allium, Phacelia, Erythronium.

Photo captions:   Tedoc stonecrop, Sedum rubiginosum, rare endemic of the Rattlesnake Creek Terrane, shown here on the slope of Tedoc Mountain https://www.calflora.org/entry/poe.html#vrid=mu20911          Showy raillardella, Raillardella pringlei, endemic to serpentine wetlands of the Trinity Ultramafic Sheet. https://www.calflora.org/entry/poe.html#vrid=mu18283        Dana York, me, and Jennifer Whipple at the Parks Creek Summit PCT trailhead, Trinity Ultramafic Sheet, Trinity/Siskiyou County line. It was 2020 and we were socially distancing, which is why I’m standing well behind them.

Sedum rubiginosum

Dana, Jen, Julie Kierstead

Raillardella pringlei