Originally from Vegas de Itata, province of Concepcion in southern Chile, for the last 30 plus years Ulloa has travelled back and forth to visit her family.  Each trip has been an opportunity to explore the countryside and its beautiful native flora and fauna.  Most photographs have been taken from Concepcion to Punta Arenas and Santiago to Valparaiso.

Chile is a long and narrow country on the southwest coast of South America and extends for approximately 2,800 miles (4,300 km) from north to south. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the east by the Andes Mountains. Central Chile has a Mediterranean climate with an extremely dry desert in the north (Atacama), a rainforest landscape to the south (Lakes Region), colder climate at the Strait of Magellan, and ice in Antarctica.

Continental Chile is isolated biologically on the north by the Atacama Desert, to the east by the Andes, to the west by the Pacific Ocean, and Antarctica to the south. Chile has 7 distinct climates that contain diverse vegetation types, including hyper arid desert, summer-dry scrublands (chaparral), the dry cold Puna of the high Andes, temperate rainforest in the Lakes Region, and Patagonian steppe in the Austral Region (Strait of Magellan). The Chilean flora includes about 5,082 species of vascular plants. Of these, 2,561 are endemic to Chile. High endemism is due to the presence of habitats with distinctively different conditions where plants cannot migrate from one location to another and are forced to evolve independently within that particular habitat.

More about Maria Ulloa:  She has a B.S. in Agronomy and Soils from Washington State University, and postgraduate education in Botany from California State University, Chico.  She has 25 years of experience with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management mostly as a Botanist. She has worked on the Clearwater, Mendocino, Shasta-Trinity, and Siskiyou National Forests and the Colorado Plateau of Southeastern Utah for the Utah State Office of the BLM.  She has been on the Sequoia for the last two years. Her favorite activities are botanizing and hiking.  She says, “It takes, me a long time to reach my destination if wildflowers are visible.”

The meeting will be held at the Conference Room in the Student Center at Porterville College. Directions: take the College exit off of Hwy 190, after entering into the College, park towards the western end of the lot, and there will be a sign to the Student Center building.

The Fall Program will also be held on October 1, 2011, at 2 pm inside the Arts Center.  Melanie Keeley, the Restoration Horticulturalist for Sequoia National Park will speak on “Planning, Planting and Maintaining 
your Native Landscape for Fire Safety”. Having a fire-safe landscape is a responsibility that comes with living in the hot, arid foothill regions of California.  While it is true that the life cycle of some California native plants are adapted to fire, it is important to retain, but manage native vegetation.

These plants perform essential functions such as watershed protection, slope stabilization, wildlife food and cover, as well as give unique character and beauty to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Proper maintenance in mature gardens and sound planning of new plantings can reduce the risk of fire not only to our own properties, but those of our neighbors.

Fire Safe Garden
at the Cal Fire Station in Three Rivers.
(Photo by Marcia Goldstein)

The 5th Annual Green Faire will be held inside the Arts Center, organized by the group that puts together the Three Rivers Environmental Weekend (TREW), that calls themselves the TREW Crew.

For more information call field trip leader, Joan Stewart, at 539-2717.

June 11: Jordan Peak
If, and this is big question, the North Road is open, and snow is mostly off ground, this would be  time to see the Erythronium in bloom, in addition to 40-50 other plants along the trail. People come from far and wide to see this lily, one of several in genus, each found only on its own mountain top, along the Sierra crest. The climb from trailhead is just over 2 miles. The peak is about 9100 feet elevation. As in former years, we meet at 10 am at the junction of North Road and the end of Highway 190, just beyond Quaking Meadow turnout.

July 9: Meadows along North Road
Some of Joan’s favorite plant/flower wanderings are in and around meadows that lie along North Road.  Each different, each special for one or another reason.  We’ll again meet at 10 am and carpool from the junction mentioned for Jordan Peak, about 24 miles from Springville.

August 6: Nobe Young Meadow
Nobe Young Meadow is historically significant as a site used by early horseback Forest Service high country rangers. It is found off Western Divide Highway about eight miles beyond the North Road junction, about 1.4 miles up Crawford Road, west of the Western Divide Highway.  Joan has spectacular color photos of this meadow from previous visits.

photo by Cathy Capone

Call Joan Stewart, at 539-2717, to confirm details 
about each field trip, like where to meet at 10 am.

Summer Field Trips at higher elevations will be planned for June and July, and will be featured in our next newsletter coming out in late May. An up-to-date field trip schedule will be posted on the this website as field trips are scheduled.

Saturday, March 5, 2011
and/or Saturday, April 2, 2011
from 9 am to 12 noon
Case Mountain BLM land in Three Rivers
Led by Elsah Cort, with Joan Stewart

More educational resources can be found on the CNPS website at http://cnps.org/cnps/education/resources.php.

Our Chapter program is combined with an all day open house at the Cal Natives Nursery in Porterville. As part of our recognition of California Native Plant Week, a new annual observance Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California for the third week of April, Cathy Capone will open her native plant nursery and demonstration garden in Porterville for a CNPS tour, from 10:30-3 pm. This could serve as an introduction to how our local natives look in garden settings.

The Chapter Program starts at 11 am, when Cathy will talk about how to mix native plants within an urban garden framework. Using natives, as minimal to low water use plants, can create a wildlife friendly, low maintenance garden. Cathy will conclude her program with a guided tour of the nursery. She will be on hand all during the day to answer questions about growing and propagating native plants.

Plants and CNPS books and posters will be available for sale.

Bring a sack lunch and spend time with friends on the patio. Coffee, tea, and lemonade will be provided. Children are welcome, however, there isn’t a child safe play yard, so supervision is needed. Please park on the street, as there is limited on site parking.

Directions:
806 W. Westfield Ave in Porterville
Traveling on Hwy 65 through Porterville, take Henderson Ave exit, turn left. Travel east on Henderson 1/4 mile, turn left on Indiana. Go 1/2 mile to the end of Indiana. Indiana stops at Westfield Avenue. House is directly across intersection, with white block fence and tall trees. Please park on the street.
Call 559-361-9164 for more information.

“Keeping a field journal develops and reinforces the most important science process skills; observation and documentation. All other parts of the process of science depend on these skills. We assume that we are naturally good observers, but learning to really see is a skill that must be learned and developed. Journal activities tie directly to the State of California science framework content standards and the visual and performing arts framework content standards.”

We would like to know who uses the material and how it is used for grant and goal purposes. In the near future, we will send you a request to evaluate the curriculum after using it. For this reason we request your email address. CNPS will not share your email address with other organizations or entities.

Questions? Please contact CNPS Education Program Director, Josie Crawford, at jcrawford@cnps.org or (916) 447-2677 ext 205.

Alta Peak Chapter would love to have someone join our board who would like to help schedule some children’s events, like special field trips geared just for kids.
Contact us if you feel a nudge about this. You don’t have to be a plant expert, just someone who knows how to make some phone calls and organize a little calendar of events.

Taking the Long View: park biologists and citizen scientists working together to monitor alpine plant communities
Saturday, February 19, 2011 from 7-8 pm
Three Rivers Arts Center on North Fork Drive

Join Sequoia Park Plant Ecologist, Sylvia Haultain, on a stunning photographic tour of the plants and animals that live above treeline. She will highlight the parks’ participation in the international Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) network and the newly established High Sierra monitoring sites in the Mt. Langley area. Discover an exciting new program that engages you, citizen scientists, in documenting changes in the timing of life cycle events of local plants. Your observations can contribute to our understanding of local climate change effects.

For more information, please call 559-565-4212.

“Storm Over Yokohl Valley” © Mona Fox Selph

The exhibit will include various media including oil, acrylic, watercolor, photographs and sculpture. All entries will relate in some way to Yokohl Valley.

The exhibit follows a similar show held at Arts Visalia in 2009 intended to bring attention to development plans for Yokohl Valley, located in the Sierra foothills east of Exeter. The J.G Boswell Company wants to build Yokohl Ranch, a 36,000-acre project to be developed in stages with a planned community of 10,000 homes, golf courses, parks and a reservoir.

Mona Fox Selph, a Three Rivers artist, attended an informational meeting on the project in 2008. She became very concerned and wanted to raise awareness about the plans for Yokohl Valley. She organized the first show at Arts Visalia, “Views of Yokohl Valley,” with help from Carol Clum, Laurie Schwaller and Shirley Blair Keller. “It was well attended and received,” Fox Selph said. “I felt that the idea needed to be repeated at other locations so that more people could think about the issue and the impact development would have.” The Tulare City Historical Society, which operates the Tulare Historical Museum, has not taken a position on the Yokohl Ranch development.

Call 559-686-2074 for more information.

For more information about the Yokohl Valley project contact Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth.