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| A map from 1650 showing California (including the Baja Peninsula) as an island off the west coast of North America. |
Baja California has been described as a “world apart” due to
its unique flora, fauna, and landscapes. An 800-mile-long mountainous peninsula
attached at its north end to the states of Sonora (Mexico) and California
(U.S.A.), Baja has been physically separated from most of Mexico for at least the
past 1 million years of geologic history. In addition, hundreds of islands large and small line
Baja’s Gulf and Pacific coasts, adding yet more layers of isolation. These
accidents of geography have given rise to amazing biodiversity and a remarkable
number of endemics (species that are found nowhere else). Islands and near-islands are perfect Petri dishes for the
development of endemics, because the species reproduce and evolve in isolation
from their closest relatives. By some estimates, nearly one-quarter of Baja’s
plants are endemic or near-endemic (restricted to Baja except for a handful of
occurrences elsewhere, usually southern California or western Sonora).
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| Satellite image of the Baja Peninsula, showing its strongly NW-SE orientation. |
We would be merely "sampling" the rich bird, plant, and marine
life during our two months of travel along the Gulf Coast of Baja California
Sur, but we were excited to get started. Sue has been working with botanist Richard
Felger on a flora of the Guaymas–San Carlos region in coastal Sonora, and she
was curious about overlaps and differences between the two floras.
Endemic bird species we hoped to find included Grey Thrasher, which we had seen
on previous car trips to northern Baja, and the lovely
Xantus’s Hummingbird, which would be new for both of us. Belding’s
Yellowthroat, a warbler found only in Baja California Sur, was also high on our
wanted list.
From our anchorage at the south end of Caleta San Juanico, Curtis
studied aerial maps of the bay on his phone and spied out a short but narrow canyon accessible from a nearby beach. We assembled and inflated our
kayaks for the first time and loaded them with daypacks, snacks, hiking shoes,
binoculars, cameras, and Sue’s plant press. We never travel light, it seems….
Before leaving the beach, Sue was already caught up
photographing a couple of unfamiliar flowering plants. The endemic Peninsular Nicolletia (Nicolletia trifida) turned out to be common on
dunes and sandy soils around Caleta San Juanico, but we came across it only
rarely elsewhere. We saw Gulf Coast Odora (Bajacalia
crassifolia), a small stinky shrub with yellow flowers and fleshy gland-tipped leaves, on
rocky slopes and cliffs throughout our trip. It is a near-endemic, mostly
restricted to Baja but also found on two islands off the Sonoran coast.
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| Peninsular Nicolletia (Nicolletia trifida), a Baja endemic. |
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| Gulf Coast Odora (Bajacalia crassifolia), a near-endemic. |
Interestingly, the Guaymas Region flora that Sue has been
working on includes a number of tiny populations of near-endemic Baja species,
suggesting that seeds or plants traveled eastward from Baja to Sonora
on the wind or water or via animal or human movements. But the reverse—finding small
outposts of Sonoran near-endemics on Baja—is a much rarer occurrence.
From the beach, we sidestepped a small estero (lagoon) and followed a gravelly arroyo that soon
narrowed and began climbing among boulders. Stately, white-barked palo blanco trees (Lysiloma candidum) lined the arroyo as well as the upper canyon.
These Lysilomas occur in only a few locations in Sonora but are apparently abundant in Baja California Sur.
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| We encountered these lovely palo blanco trees (Lysiloma candidum) nearly everywhere we traveled in BCS. |
A bright orange flower in a rock cleft caught Sue’s eye—Showy
Rock Nettle (Eucnide aurea), a life
plant! Endemic to Baja, this rock nettle has a peculiar strategy for
reproduction: after it goes to seed, the flower stem elongates and curves back
toward the rock cleft the plant is growing in, eventually inserting the seedhead
into the cleft and effectively replanting itself.
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| Showy Rock Nettle (Eucnide aurea), a Baja endemic. Although it looks prickly, it is not a true nettle. |
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| The spent flower stems of Showy Rock Nettle elongate and curve back toward the roots to "plant" their own seeds. |
Palmer Wild Fig (Ficus
palmeri) occurs on rock slopes and in shaded canyons of Sonora as well as
on Baja, so we were not surprised to find several large trees in this canyon. These fig trees usually get their start in a rock cleft, and the exposed whitish roots can literally crawl
down the rock face toward water or soil. The ripe figs are reportedly edible, but we didn't find any to sample on this hike.
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| A 30-foot-tall Palmer Wild Fig (Ficus palmeri), with Curtis for scale. |
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| Palmer Wild Fig with 30 feet of exposed roots cascading down a cliff. Curtis refused to climb this cliff, so he is not in the photo for scale. |
We both loved this tiny canyon, less than three-quarters of a mile hike from the beach to where we found ourselves "cliffed out," but we did not have an opportunity to revisit it. The next day, the wind shifted back strongly to the north, so we moved Cilantro to the other end of the anchorage, where we would stay for the next nine days in the shelter of Punta San Basilio, waiting out another norther. We learned later from our friends Doug and Linda, anchored nearby on their boat Qué Linda, that this fig canyon also contained a small set of petroglyphs that we missed entirely!
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| View east down canyon toward Cilantro at anchor. Her bow is facing right, indicating that the wind is still blowing from the south. |
Next up: Sitting out a norther at San Juanico, hiking to a sea cave, Curtis's brother stops by, a visit to Rancho Escondido.
