The Payne Ranch, Colusa County, California

Yesterday I went on a plant collecting trip with my CA Floristics class. It's part of an optional two credit project that a bunch of us are taking in addition to the regular class. We spent about 7 hours walking through the 15,000 acres of BLM land that is The Payne Ranch.


We only walked about 3.5 miles in that time because we're plant people and every five steps we need to stop and say "Hey, isn't that in the Ericaceae family?" or something equally nerdy. Also, we were collecting plants for our projects so we had to take down information on data sheets every time we collected something. At the end of the day we pressed the plants in a plant press and they will be dried in the presses and then mounted as herbarium specimens. Basically that means that they will be glued and taped onto pieces of paper and identified with a label, then filed in the Herbarium, which is a huge reference library full of pressed plants. Sweet.


The day was wonderful for so many reasons. I can't really stress enough how nice it is to go on hikes with people who care about plants as much as I do. It's very satisfying. As we walked through the ranch we passed through grasslands, oak woodlands, and riparian areas.




We even saw serpentine soils, which are full of heavy metals and have very interesting, often stunted vegetation. Or none at all like in the hillside below.


Part of the project is identifying the plants we collected, so I don't actually have any names for some of the pictures I'm showing.

Delphinium sp., Ranunculaceae

Chick lupine, Lupinus microcarpus, Fabaceae

Unknown flower (for now)

The BLM leases the land to ranchers to herd their cattle and we definitely had some company while we were there. We actually got to see some cowboys (and a cowgirl) herding cattle up over a ridge. I took a video with my camera and I'm going to post it on Youtube soon, because I have no idea how I would put a movie up on this blog.


Besides the cows we saw a rattle snake, two garter snakes, a baby jackrabbit, many lizards, and a few frogs. California is awesome.




I also took a lot of pictures of gorgeous lichen-covered rocks and I will post them soon. They range in color from fire orange to turquoise to creamy white, wait until you see them, oh man they're beautiful.