| Phacelia greenei | |
|---|---|
 | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Asterids |
| Order: | Boraginales |
| Family: | Boraginaceae |
| Genus: | Phacelia |
| Species: | P. greenei |
| Binomial name | |
| Phacelia greenei | |
Phacelia greenei is a species of phacelia known by the common name Scott Valley phacelia. It is endemic to the southern Klamath Mountains of far northern California, where it is known only from Scott Valley, a valley known for its alfalfa growing, and vicinity.
Phacelia is a genus of about 200 species of annual or perennial herbaceous plants, native to North and South America.
Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. An alternative term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, which applies to species that are restricted to a defined geographical area.
The Klamath Mountains are a rugged and lightly populated mountain range in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon in the western United States. They have a varied geology, with substantial areas of serpentinite and marble, and a climate characterized by moderately cold winters with very heavy snowfall and warm, very dry summers with limited rainfall, especially in the south. As a consequence of the geology and soil types, the mountains harbor several endemic or near-endemic trees, forming one of the largest collections of conifers in the world. The mountains are also home to a diverse array of fish and animal species, including black bears, large cats, owls, eagles, and several species of Pacific salmon. Millions of acres in the mountains are managed by the United States Forest Service. The northernmost and largest sub-range of the Klamath Mountains are the Siskiyou Mountains.
It is a serpentine soils endemic growing in the coniferous forests of the mountains.
Serpentine soil is an uncommon soil type produced by weathered ultramafic rock such as peridotite and its metamorphic derivatives such as serpentinite. More precisely, serpentine soil contains minerals of the serpentine subgroup, especially antigorite, lizardite, and chrysotile or white asbestos, all of which are commonly found in ultramafic rocks. The term "serpentine" is commonly used to refer to both the soil type and the mineral group which forms its parent materials.
Temperate coniferous forest is a terrestrial habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Temperate coniferous forests are found predominantly in areas with warm summers and cool winters, and vary in their kinds of plant life. In some, needleleaf trees dominate, while others are home primarily to broadleaf evergreen trees or a mix of both tree types. A separate habitat type, the tropical coniferous forests, occurs in more tropical climates.
This is an annual herb with a branching or unbranched erect stem reaching no more than about 15 centimeters in height. It is glandular and coated in short hairs called trichomes. The lance-shaped, smooth-edged leaves are up to 3 centimeters in length. The hairy inflorescence is a small, one-sided curving or coiling cyme of five-lobed flowers. Each flower is about half a centimeter long and deep purple or blue in color with a white or yellowish tubular throat. The leaves of the plant are alternate in pattern and are long and narrow. [1] The herb begins blooming in April and stops blooming in June. [2]
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed. The modifications can involve the length and the nature of the internodes and the phyllotaxis, as well as variations in the proportions, compressions, swellings, adnations, connations and reduction of main and secondary axes. Inflorescence can also be defined as the reproductive portion of a plant that bears a cluster of flowers in a specific pattern.
