Mary's Notes
A Bristlecone Chapter Flora and Plant Lists in Digital Format
Among Mary DeDecker’s notable accomplishments was the creation of a notecard database for the flora of eastern California. Mary typed meticulous notes of plant observations on 5 x 7 in. notecards and stored them in four boxes, organized by plant family. She created a card for each of the 3000+ taxa she observed in our chapter area, and continued to add to each card over a period of more than four decades - an amazing source of inspiration and treasure hunts for any plant enthusiast that has seen them. On each card, she recorded her own plant collections and informal observations, plus collections and observations made by others, and found through personal communication, literature, and herbarium searches. In addition to her own notes, some of the most valuable records are the hundreds of observations from local naturalists, including Doris Fredendall, Derham Giuliani, Mary Ann Henry, and others. Mary’s notecards contain more than 16,000 individual records. The cards are now at the Eastern California Museum in Independence, and are currently being scanned.
In honor of Mary, the Bristlecone Chapter carries on the tradition of recording observations as a resource for plant enthusiasts. Thus far, we have entered records from numerous herbaria, theses, more than 100 plant lists, and from Mary’s cards into a digital database with more than 45,000 records. Original plant lists and combined and updated versions with updated taxonomy can be retrieved. New plant lists can be generated based on geographic range, from mountain ranges to specific canyons.
The Bristlecone Chapter welcomes your contribution of plant lists for our geographic area- Inyo and Mono counties, primarily. You can submit plant lists or requests for lists to be retrieved to secretary@bristleconecnps.org. Lists in spreadsheet or Word document format are preferred, although hard copy and scanned lists are welcome. We also welcome updates to plant lists you have submitted in the past.
Note: A few printable plant checklists, some created from Mary's Notes, are also available on our Plant Checklists page.
