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| Bolander's Lily |
Derived from ultramafic rocks pushed up from the earth's crust, serpentine soils generally lack the basic nutrients that most plants need. However a certain set of unique and rare plants has evolved adaptations that enable them to tolerate and sometimes thrive in the highly mineralized soils.
Many of these plants are rare and endemic to the Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon and grow nowhere else in the world.
Veva appreciated the rugged tenacity and remarkable adaptations that our rare serpentine plants have evolved.
For example, to cope with low nitrogen conditions, the showy California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) has evolved the remarkable strategy of carnivory. The plant uses a scent cue to attract flies into a small opening in its enclosed hood, where they become trapped. Ultimately, the insects die and fall into a solution of special enzymes that dissolve them into usable nitrogen for the plant’s metabolism. The Roundleaf sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) is another plant that uses carnivory as a strategy.
Other serpentine plants have adapted to low soil nutrients by fixing their own nitrogen from the atmosphere. Ceonothus –including Siskiyou mat (Ceanothus pumilus) and Tobacco brush (Ceanothus velutinus)— is a genus that uses this strategy.
To cope with the presence of heavy metals, some plants hyper-accumulate them in their foliage, effectively isolating them from metabolic processes. For example, Fendler’s pennycress (Thlaspi montanum), a species in the Brassicaceae family, concentrates 3,833 micrograms of nickel in its thick, fleshy leaves. If a pest tries to munch its foliage, the heavy metals likely serve as a pesticide or deterrent.
Some plants are not serpentine obligates but instead endure the challenging soil conditions and grow only in stunted forms. Some trees that grow to full size nearby, but reach only to dwarf height on serpentine soils include Port Orford cedar, knobcone pine, Jeffrey pine, and madrone.
Southwest Oregon’s serpentine plant communities are remarkably diverse, owing to a wide array of conditions, including elevation, slope, aspect, hydrology, rainfall, and specific soil chemistry.
From distinctive Darlingtonia fens to stark serpentine barrens and Jeffrey pine savannahs, the unique presence of serpentine plant communities is one key reason that the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains have been globally recognized as one of the world’s hotspots for botanical and biological diversity.
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| Darlingtonia fen |
Appreciating our rare serpentine plants is not always easy; some have beautiful showy flowers that bloom only for a short time; to find them, you need to know where and when to look.
The project of getting to know and appreciate our local serpentine plants captivated Veva Stansell’s imagination and drove her lifelong passion to study natural history and share her knowledge with others. Designation of the Veva Stansell Botanical Area, with its unique population of Veva’s erigeron, will further honor Veva's contributions and continue her legacy by protecting and foster awareness and stewardship of our region's extraordinarily unique botanical resources.
To learn more about our region’s extraordinary rare plant natural heritage, check out this U.S. Forest Service website that highlights the special botanical values of Klamath-Siskiyou Serpentine Plant Communities.
Here's a great, short, non-technical, fun-to-read article about Why so many Siskiyou plants?
To read a paper Veva wrote about the California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) click here: Darlingtonia californica: Geographical Distribution Habitat & Threats
To read more about botanical values of the BLM's adjacent Hunter Creek Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), click here for Nancy Brian's article: Hunter Creek
To help protect these values locally, please support designation of the Veva Stansell Botanical Area by clicking here to add your name to our petition.
