Walnut Creek amateur botanist discovers two new species of plants!

Save Mount Diablo's announcement that Walnut Creek's David Gowen has discovered two new

This is really awesome, breaking news. Just received a notice from Seth Adams at save Mount Diablo about Walnut Creek resident David Gowen discovering two new plant species in the Lime Ridge Open Space, never before described by nature. That doesn't happen every day!  The exact locations of the new species are being kept secret to protect them. The whole clandestine element makes it even cooler. Press release follows:

 
(Walnut Creek/Concord) Lightning has struck twice in Walnut Creek, CA, at Lime Ridge Open Space, a biodiversity hot spot of just three square miles but including roughly 35 rare species.  David Gowen, an amateur botanist associated with the California Native Plant Society, has discovered two new plant species never before described by science, near downtown Walnut Creek.  The discovery is startling because the area is easily accessible and it has been studied by botanists for 150 years.  Conservation efforts are underway.
 
Representatives of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), Save Mount Diablo (SMD), the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation (WCOSF), the City of Walnut Creek (city), and U.C. Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium (Jepson Herbarium), announced the discovery of two new plants, two pretty and related wildflowers in the phlox family, which resemble star shaped flower-studded pin cushions.
 
The plants, the Lime Ridge Navarretia (Navarretia gowenii) and the Lime Ridge Woollystar (Eriastrum sp. nov.) miraculously survived a hundred years of quarrying and other activities until their habitat was protected as the cities of Walnut Creek and Concord’s jointly owned Lime Ridge Open Space.  Both have been confirmed as new species by genetic and other testing.  Both are critically and globally endangered given tiny habitats and small numbers.
 
“This isn’t in some foreign country or in the boonies,” said David Gowen, both plants’ discoverer, “it’s the heart of an urbanized environment where many famous botanists have worked. It was a surprise that the plants had been missed.  We still have a lot to learn right here in our own backyard.  Discovering one new plant is incredible; that there are two new species in the same general location is a miracle.  This same three square mile area has more than thirty other rare plant and animal species.  Lime Ridge is a hot spot for biodiversity.”
 
“What a gift that the people of Walnut Creek had the foresight to protect this area.” said Brad Rovanpera, Public Information Officer for the City of Walnut Creek, “Walnut Creek voters approved an open space bond measure in 1974 that sought to preserve these precious lands in perpetuity."
 
“These two new species were hiding right under our noses.  Their locations are being kept secret to protect them,” said Seth Adams, Director of Land Programs for Save Mount Diablo, a conservation organization that helped to create Lime Ridge Open Space.  “Mt. Diablo and Lime Ridge are an incredible gold mine for an enormous number of rare plant species.  This is a very big deal, not just one but two new species in a tiny area on the edge of development.  It’s incredible that there are still unexplored areas so close to an urban area, with eight million people within an hour’s drive. This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my life, right up there with the rediscovery of the Mt. Diablo buckwheat and possible sightings of the Ivory-billed woodpeckers,” he said, referring to a plant long thought extinct and considered the ‘Holy Grail’ of East Bay botanists until its 2005 rediscovery just after the bird, also thought extinct, was sighted.
 
“Lime Ridge is spectacular but it’s not pristine,” said Bob Simmons, the President of the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation which also helped to preserve Lime Ridge and which restores native plants and wildlife habitat there and in the other open space areas and which advises Walnut Creek on its management of the open space areas.  “It was quarried for lime for a hundred years but these plants managed to survive in less than 2,000 acres—the spots where they grow probably total less than an acre.  They’re on the critical edge of extinction--it’s up to us to make sure that they’re not lost.”
 
“The two new species are annuals,” said Heath Bartosh, Chair of the Rare Plants Committee of CNPS.  “They flower, seed and die each year then grow from seed the next year.  We delayed the announcement of their discovery until they seeded to make their location even more difficult to find.  They’re only found in small areas.  There are people out there who might ‘love them to death.’  Nonetheless we announced their discovery to help support conservation and biodiversity protection.  Lime Ridge Navarretia has already been given the highest level of protection through CNPS’s Rare Plant Inventory. Once the Lime Ridge Woollystar is described we will be pursuing the same Inventory protection for it.”
 
“These discoveries may be just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ron Brown, Executive Director of Save Mount Diablo. “Mt. Diablo harbors one of the healthiest and most important ecosystems in the San Francisco Bay Area.  “It’s the crown jewel of the East Bay.  The discoveries underscore the need to conserve and buffer the mountain’s biological richness.  If we can find two new species in such a small area, it makes you wonder what else is out there, what other secrets does Mt. Diablo hold?  It’s also important that we protect and monitor these rare species and biodiversity hot spots because they can be indicators of global warming and other threats.”
 
“When we talk about protecting biodiversity, we recognize that it’s not just the known universe of species that pertain,” said Laura Baker, Conservation Chair and  member of the Board of CNPS.   “We need to conserve large,  diverse areas, including those adjacent to urban areas, to protect as-yet-undiscovered species.  Native plant species, especially rare species, are not as well known to the public and so sometimes they’re hiding in plain sight. The beauty of these discoveries is that the new species were found on protected lands, in essence waiting until the right person came along to notice them.  And identifying them is just the first step in protection.  We need to know more about the ecological role of these species and how the overall ecosystem works because ultimately it’s the ecosystem that supports biodiversity.”
 
“David Gowen deserves a lot of credit,” said Leigh Johnson, an Associate Professor at Brigham Young University and the recognized expert of the genus in which one of the new species is found, “amateur’s not the right word…he has this great power of observation, he pays close attention to detail.  If he hadn’t done that then the plant would have been overlooked.”
 
“Lime Ridge is an interesting place, which is why I’ve directed botanists there,” said Barbara Ertter, Curator of Western North American Flora at U.C Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium, and co-author of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California, 2nd edition.  “As far as I know, the earliest collections are those by Bowerman, who had to get special access since the mining was still in operation.  There is NO record of what grew on the lime deposits prior to mining; one can easily visualize the Lime Ridge Navarretia and the Lime Ridge Woollystar being tiny remnants of a lime-adapted set of plants, on a specialized habitat comparable in size to Antioch Dunes or the Mt Diablo serpentines.  Who knows if there were other species, lost before they were ever recorded?”
 
"The new discoveries highlight how exceptionally important Lime Ridge and Mount Diablo are to science,” said Gowen, “and how much we still have to learn.”
 
---more at full release:  http://www.savemountdiablo.org/Lime%20Ridge%20Rare%20Plants/MEDIA%20RELEASE-Lime%20Ridge%20Rare%20Plants%206-12-2008.pdf

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