Dark days of Winter

It has been a while since I last posted. This is pretty much due to the fact that the field season is over. Or is it?
For being December in California, it has been unreasonably hot. These past few days we have reached record heat. Poppies are blooming on the side of the freeways! Thousands of seedlings are sprouting on the hillsides!

However, since it is winter and the growing season is over, I have been chipping away at identifying my collections. Sitting in the office with my eyes glued to the scope and Jepson Manual, I am now anxious to get back out into the field.

Office work is not all that bad, it is where one gets the opportunity to open herbarium cabinets, shuffle through specimens, "hem and haw", and occasionally identify a rare plant.

I found out this week that I collected Eriogonum breedlovei var. shevockii! Pretty cool find! Jim Shevock collected this species in the Scodies, the month and year I was born! I re-collected it 27 years later, near the site he collected it, but a little bit aways from it.

I'm about 25% of the way through my collections. I hope to get through all of it before the next field season begins. I can't wait!