Annual Meeting and Special Presentations
Thursday, October 21, 2021
6:30 – 8:00 pm (via Zoom)
Click Here to View a Recording of the Presentations
Botanizing the Trinity Ultramafic Sheet in the Klamath Mountains of NW California
Julie Kierstead
Professional Botanist
US Forest Service - Retired
What makes the Trinity Ultramafic Sheet special floristically? A combination of diversity of topography, elevation, substrate; a lot of water—snowmelt, groundwater, springs, rivers and perennial streams; a lot of rock; large continuous areas of serpentinite and peridotite; and the great age of the landscape, are what makes this a special place for people who love plants. We will discuss geology, logistics of getting to the good places, and we will present information on endemic and disjunct plants of the area.
Julie Kierstead has been a professional botanist since 1976, doing rare plant surveys and conservation work in Oregon and California. She has a B.S. in botany from Oregon State University and an M.S. in biology from Northern Arizona University, and worked in the herbarium at both schools. Julie worked for Berry Botanic Garden in Portland as conservation director from 1982 until 1988, developing a seed bank for rare & endangered plants of the Pacific Northwest, and lobbying for the Oregon state Endangered Species Act. From 1989 to 2019 she was Forest Botanist for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Redding, CA; she retired from the Forest Service in 2019. With Gary Nakamura she edited the 2001 publication Field Guide to Selected Rare Plants of Northern California, published by the University of California. Recently she's coauthored papers naming several new rare NW California endemic plants, including Vaccinium shastense, Adiantum shastense, and Erythronium shastense; a monograph of Sedum subgenus Gormania, a new Allium (in press), and she coauthored Ken DeCamp's Wildflowers of California's Klamath Mountains (2021). Julie has served on the boards of Northern California Botanists, the California Native Plant Society certification board, and Calflora. She is a member of the CNPS Rare Plant Program Committee, and is a CNPS California certified consulting botanist. Julie has taught several Jepson field workshops in NW California. Oh, and she has two fabulous grown sons, one in Sacramento and one in Portland!