Contra Costa County is located in the state of California in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,049,025. The county seat is Martinez. It occupies the northern portion of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is primarily suburban. The county's name is Spanish for "opposite coast", referring to its position on the other side of the bay from San Francisco. Contra Costa County is included in the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton and northeast of Danville. It is an isolated upthrust peak of 3,849 feet, visible from most of the San Francisco Bay Area. Mount Diablo appears from many angles to be a double pyramid and has many subsidiary peaks, the largest and closest of which is the other half of the double pyramid, North Peak, nearly as high in elevation at 3,557 feet (1,084 m), and is about one mile northeast of the main summit.
Eriogonum is the scientific name for a genus of flowering plants in the family Polygonaceae. The genus is found in North America and is known as wild buckwheat. This is a highly species-rich genus, and indications are that active speciation is continuing. It includes some common wildflowers such as the California buckwheat.
Native plants are plants indigenous to a given area in geologic time. This includes plants that have developed, occur naturally, or existed for many years in an area.
Morgan Territory is a regional preserve in California established in the late 20th century on the east side of Mount Diablo in the San Francisco East Bay's Contra Costa County. The acquisition and expansion of this territory has preserved important habitat and watersheds in the area for the public. Now an estimated 5,000 acres (20 km²), its creation has been a collaboration by public and private parties. It has been connected to Mount Diablo State Park by acquisition and transfer of properties between them.
Mary Leolin Bowerman was an American botanist, co-author of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California; Their Distribution and Association into Plant Communities, and the co-founder of Save Mount Diablo. She helped to preserve tens of thousands of acres of Mount Diablo in the San Francisco East Bay before dying at age 97. In 1936 she was the last person to record the Mount Diablo buckwheat Eriogonum truncatum, until it was rediscovered nearly seventy years later on May 10, 2005. In 1978 the manzanita Arctostaphylos bowermaniae was named in her honor.
Eriogonum fasciculatum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common names California buckwheat and eastern Mojave buckwheat.
Arctostaphylos auriculata is an endangered species of Arctostaphylos endemic to California, and limited in geography to the area surrounding Mount Diablo, in Contra Costa County.
Smith's blue butterfly, Euphilotes enoptes smithi, is an subspecies of butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. This federally listed endangered subspecies of Euphilotes enoptes occurs in fragmented populations along the Central Coast of California, primarily associated with sand dune habitat in one case with a dune-based Maritime Coast Range Ponderosa Pine forest in the Carbonera Creek watershed in Santa Cruz County. The range of E. e. smithi is from Monterey Bay south to Punta Gorda.
Apodemia mormo langei, the Lange's metalmark butterfly, is an endangered North American butterfly. It is a subspecies of the Mormon metalmark and belongs to the family Riodinidae. The butterfly is endemic to California, where it is known from one strip of riverbank in the San Francisco Bay Area. A 2008 count estimated the total remaining population at 131 individuals. Since 2011, this number has dropped to about 25–30.
Eriogonum arborescens is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Santa Cruz Island buckwheat.
Eriogonum giganteum, with the common name St. Catherine's lace, is a species of wild buckwheat in Southern California.
Eriogonum pyrolifolium is a species of wild buckwheat. It is native to western North America, from British Columbia to the high mountains of California.
Eriogonum umbellatum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name sulphurflower buckwheat, or simply sulphur flower. It is native to western North America from California to Colorado to central Canada, where it is abundant and found in many habitats. This is an extremely variable plant and hard to identify because individuals can look very different from one another. Also, there are a great many varieties. It may be a perennial herb forming a small clump with flowers to 10 centimeters tall, or a sprawling shrub approaching two meters high and wide. The leaves are usually woolly and low on the plant, and the flowers come in many colors from white to bright yellow to purple. Native American groups utilized parts of this plant for a number of medicinal uses.
Eriogonum flavum is a species of wild buckwheat.
Eriogonum deserticola is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Colorado Desert buckwheat.
Eriogonum sphaerocephalum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name rock buckwheat. It is native to the western United States primarily east of the crest of the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon to Idaho and from southern Oregon and northern California to northern Nevada. It is a common member of desert, rocky and sagebrush steppe habitats. Eriogonum sphaerocephalum is found over a wide range of elevations, but is most common between 2,000–7,000 feet (600–2,100 m).
Marsh Creek is a stream in east Contra Costa County, California in Northern California which rises on the eastern side of Mount Diablo and flows 30 miles (48 km) to the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta at Oakley, California, near Big Break Regional Shoreline. The creek flows through Marsh Creek State Park (California), where water is impounded to form Marsh Creek Reservoir, then through the city of Brentwood, California.
Eriogonum soredium is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Frisco buckwheat. It is endemic to Utah in the United States, where it is known only from Beaver County. There are four populations, all located in the San Francisco Mountains. It is a candidate for federal protection.
