A Flora of Coyote Ridge and Flat, Inyo County, California - Martin Purdy - Torrey Talks

California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains are one of the most floristically diverse regions of their size in the United States. Located in the central Sierra Nevada, the area known as Coyote Ridge and Flat marks a topographically and geologically unique part of the range’s eastern slope which has long been known to botanists for harboring populations of rare and disjunct plant taxa. For his MS in Botany at California Botanic Garden (formerly Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden) Marty completed a specimen-based floristic inventory of the vascular and nonvascular plant species of Coyote Ridge and Flat. Fieldwork and herbarium searches conducted for this project documented a total of 547 minimum-rank taxa, 273 of which were not previously known to the area. New collections and the examination of historical specimens yielded occurrences of 12 new rare plants for the area including new records for the Sierra Nevada Mountains and one new record for the state of California. In addition to covering the methods, results, and highlights of his research, Marty will also discuss the importance of floristic inventories in our current era of global change and floristics affinities in the Eastern Sierra region.

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Torrey Botanical Society Fall 2023 Lecture Series
presented by Martin “Marty” Purdy, MS, Assistant State Botanist, New Mexico Forestry Division
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00:00 Introduction
04:27 Lecture
57:10 Q&A
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For more information on future lectures, field trips, and the Torrey Botanical Society, visit https://www.torreybotanical.org