Volume 24 No. 1 January/February 2004
THE CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY |
NEXT CHAPTER MEETING Our next meeting will be on January 28'h, at 7:00 p.m. at the White Mtn. Research Station (WMRS). New WMRS Associate Director John Smiley will present a talk titled: "Fine structuring of willows, leaf beetles, and predators: adventures in the chemical dimension." His talk will focus on the history of a long term project to study the interactions between willow communities and associated insects. The aspirin-like compounds in willows play a central role, not only organizing the willow-herbivore interaction, but passing up the food chain and promoting specialized behavior in predators and parasites in the community. These findings support the idea that the "chemical dimension" is a major arena for the development of biological complexity. NEXT CHAPTER BOARD MEETING The next chapter board meeting will be at 7:00 p.m on Tuesday, January 20th, at Jerry Zatorski's house. All are welcome to attend. Please contact Jerry at 872-3818 for directions. PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE: I'd like to begin my first president's message by acknowledging the fine job Stephen Ingram did as our chapter president for two and a half years. His leadership and his support for and participation in all our chapter activities contributed greatly to what we were able to accomplish. Thank you, Stephen! I'm grateful that many of our Board members will be continuing in their positions. A warm welcome to Sue Weis who was elected Vice President and will be planning our programs. Cheryl Chipman will be taking over for Heidi Hopkins as publicity chairman and Edyth Irvine for Lora Rischer as education chairman. We thank Heidi and Lora for their work for our chapter and welcome Edyth and Cheryl to the Board. Our busy chapter needs volunteers, in all our efforts. If you'd like to help out and you have a particular interest, call the chairman on the back of this newsletter or call me. Our board meetings are open to members and we'd love to see some new faces. We all enjoyed so much meeting at the Eastern California Museum last spring to dedicate our Mary Dedecker Native Plant Garden that we are planning to hold our May meeting there this year. We will meet on Saturday, May lst,at 2:00 p.m. for an excellent program and tours of the garden in full bloom. We hope this will be a convenient time and place for many of our members in the southern Owens Valley and will encourage interest in the garden among Independence residents. Our January and March evening meetings will be the last Wednesdays of those months in Bishop. Please mark your 2004 calendar. May winter rains bring back the wonderful display of wildflowers we enjoyed so much last spring! . . . . .. . .Sherryl Taylor UPCOMING EVENTS FIELD TRIPS 2004-Lead a trip this year! Will it be another stupendous flower-filled spring? Find out on a Bristlecone Chapter field trip. We hope to have a range of trips, starting in the low desert in early spring and ending up in the high country in late fall. Many think that sharing flowers and beautiful places is the best part of belonging to the Bristlecone Chapter. We will work on the field trip schedule at our next regular meeting on January 28 in Bishop. Please come with ideas for trips and plan to lead one! Trip leaders do not have to be botanists or plant experts -only a willingness to share a favorite place and a diligence with logistical details such as trip descriptions, car-pooling and communications. Please call with ideas or to volunteer to lead a trip. CONSERVATION Truth is stranger than fiction! In November 2003, residents of Owens Valley received (courtesy of LADWP) a large, glossy, color mailing entitled "Your guide to the great Owens Valley." Close examination of the brochure reveals several interesting things. As well as the usual touting of restoration projects (without mentioning that the projects are behind schedule and only carried out in response to litigation or the threat thereof), the guide twice showed a familiar photo. Familiar, that is, if you are familiar with the website of the Owens Valley Committee (OVC). The caption LADWP assigned to the photo reads "The oldest trees on the planet -4,000 year-old bristlecone pines -are found east of Big Pine in the White Mountains." The problem is that the photo shows a bristlecone in the Panamint Mountains, not the Whites, and the playa in the background is in Death Valley, not Owens Valley. Oops! This story has a happy ending. The photographer, none,other than chapter past president Stephen Ingram, reports that the copyrighted photo was used without his permission. He said LADWP's consultant that produced the brochure has admitted the error and agreed to a legal settlement. If only LADWP would settle its violations of the Water Agreement so quickly and easily! .. . . . ...Daniel Pritchett NEW MEMBERS The Bristlecone Chapter warmly welcomes Beth Dolgin - Mammoth Lakes Paul & Carol Richman - Bishop NEXT NEWSLETTER DEADLINE -FEBRUARY 28TH (For membership information and the chapter directory, please see the PDF version. That version is a direct copy of the original, and thus is also free of optical character recognition errors, which this version is very likely to contain in spite of efforts to minimize them. Please be especially aware of the possibility of errors in plant names.) |