Plants of Vernal Pool Landscapes in the Chico Area
Thursday, May 20, 2021
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
By Rob Schlising
Department of Biological Sciences
California State University, Chico
(emeritus)
View the Presentation Here
This presentation is meant to compensate (a bit!) for the scarcity or total lack of group fieldtrips to vernal pool landscapes during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. A large number of close-up photographs of vernal pool plants will be shown, and a series of short factoids (generalizations characterizing the nature and growth of these plants) will be inserted throughout the program. Photographs have been assembled from a number of landscapes in the Chico Area. Most will be from The Nature Conservancy’s huge Vina Plains Preserve north of Chico, or from an 80-acre landscape along Highway 99 south of Chico called the “Richvale Vernal Pools.” Although focus will be on flowering plants, there will also be pictures of perhaps lesser-known “relatives” of ferns and clubmosses that occur in vernal pools. Photos of local rare vernal pool plants (several state- or federally-listed as “endangered”) will be included, as will as photos of several rare and minute springtime annuals found in the adjacent “uplands” of the landscapes containing the pools.
The speaker is retired from the Department of Biological Sciences at Chico State University, where he taught courses in general ecology, plant ecology and field biology. His published research has been on vernal pool plants as well as on geophytes. He has co-edited five books with articles expanded from talks at conferences held in Chico—one book on vernal pool plants and their habitats in 1990, and four books on vernal pool landscapes from 2007 to 2019.