Oakmead Herbarium and Collections

Oakmead Herbarium Annual Report
Mapping Preserve Willows
Curation and fieldwork & Herbarium affiliates
Calflora Great Places (search All Observation Entries)

Vascular Plants | Bryophytes | Lichens
Plant photo favorites   | Virtual tour with our photo archive
Fading wildflowers? Disappearances and declines 

The earliest known plant collections from the Jasper Ridge area are from the 1860s. Originally part of Volney Rattan's herbarium, the specimen sheets are conserved in the Preserve's Oakmead Herbarium and have the location Searsville. Over the intervening 150 years numerous workers have cumulatively reported more than 900 different vascular plants and 77 bryophytes, and since 2000, the herbarium group has added to the herbarium nearly 1,000 specimens of plants and lichens. There are, however, other and perhaps more significant measures of the richness of the Preserve's flora . . . read more about locally rare plants.

Today the Oakmead Herbarium and Collections of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (JROH) has 6,000+ vouchers of most bryophytes, lichens, and 800+ vascular plants representing 10% of the 7,600+ terminal taxa (species, subspecies, varieties) native or naturalized in California.* Specimen records are in the Consortium of California Herbaria. 

Learn more about the Oakmead Herbarium Group.

•  Vascular Plant List
  • Introduction, abbreviations, symbols
  • Additions to the flora 2000- | Disappearances and declines
  • Hybrids not given taxonomic status in TJM2
  • Waifs, garden escapes, agricultural weeds, eradicated exotics
  • Under-documented reports and erroneous inclusions
• Phylogentic guide to Jasper Ridge Vascular Plant Families | Jepson eFlora Phylogenetic Index
• Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve Serpentine Flora
• JRBP Poales E-Flora
• C4 species at JRBP
• Plants of Searsville Lake and Wetlands South of Searsville Lake
• Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment Plant List 2012
• Plants in the local flora with nitrogen-fixing symbionts
  

  

• Bryophyte Checklist
• Field characters of some bryophytes
• The Mosses of Stanford University and Vicinity
• The amazing design of a moss leaf (James Shevock)

Lichens, Fleshy Fungi

• Preliminary Lichen Checklist, 2022
• Renshaw, D. Common Lichens of Jasper Ridge
• Doel, J. 1996. Key to the commoner lichens on Jasper Ridge.
• Tucker, S. 2014. Catalog of Lichens, Lichenicoles and Allied Fungi in California. Includes links to photographs
• Photos of some Jasper Ridge lichens
• Tok, E. 2022. Make Your Own Herbarium: Guide to Macrofungi Collection | JRBP Fungi Collection: planning document
• JRBP Macrofungi Photos

Continuing Education 

• Cheney, C. Introduction to JRBP Native Trees
• Corelli, T. Woody Plants at Jasper Ridge
• Derrer, Teal. Notable Spring Wildflowers in the Serpentine Bunchgrass Grassland and adjacent Oak Woodlands. Photographs by Alice Cummings. 
• Oakmead Herbarium. Plant photo favorites and Virtual tour
• Oakmead Herbarium.  Plants in the local flora with nitrogen-fixing symbionts
• Oakmead Herbarium. Plant Family Characteristics
• Oakmead Herbarium. Selected Plant List by Family
• Rawlings and Renshaw. Simple Willow identification guide: leaf comparison and variation
• Renshaw, D. Common Lichens of Jasper Ridge
• Renshaw, D. Fall Trees and Shrubs of Jasper Ridge | Derrer, T. Trees + Shrubs Checklist

News

• Floral Postcards | Palmer Oaks | Round-tooth Ookow
• Calflora Great Places
• Herbarium Group 
• Floristic Statistics (2012): 820 vascular plant taxa, 443 genera and 103 families. Oakmead Herbarium also preserves 70 Bryophyte taxa and 210 lichens
• Additions to the vascular flora 2000-
• Disappearances and declines & Intervention ecology now?
• Weeds, including Herbarium weeding projects, Arrival dates of some naturalized grasses 
• Jasper Ridge place names

Maps & Vegetation Surveys

• Special Status: Rare.kmz and Dirca.kml | Locally Rare (.kmz) | Watch List (.kmz)
• Riparian: invasives (Acacia) and sensitive plants (Rare, Locally Rare, and Watch List maps listed above)
• Willow sampling in marsh and creeks
• Danthonia californica in a vernally wet meadow 
• Vegetation Map rev. 2016 (Affiliates)
• Geology Map (Affiliates)
• Sector Map Book (Affiliates)
• Herb Dengler Place Names + Google Earth version (Affiliates)
• Insolation Map
• William Cooper Transect
• Herb Dengler Vegetation Transect 1953 (Affiliates)
• Preserve Trails 1/1982 | 1/1985 | 12/1988
• CNPS Vegetation Rapid Assessments 2008
• Proposed Dam Sites on San Francisquito Creek. [Property of Leland Stanford in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties.] Stanford University Special Collections and Archive. M009 os after 1885; [1883? - 1887?]
• Plat of Rancho Canada del Corte Madera, with overlay of Preserve boundary, 1879
• San Mateo Countywide Vegetation Assessment: Fine Scale Veg Map web portal; Preserve data sheets
• Santa Clara-Santa Cruz Countywide Vegetation Assessment, Data Portal: Project Update
• Map Archive Index (Affiliates)

Rare Plants and CNPS Rank 

• Allium peninsulare Greene var. franciscanum McNeal & Ownbey [Rank 1B.2]    (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere)
• Amsinckia lunaris J. F. Macbr. [Rank 1B.2]  (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere). Calflora
• Arabis blepharophylla Hook. & Arn. [Rank  4.3]   (limited distribution)
• Dirca occidentalis A. Gray [Rank 1B.2]   (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere)
• Eryngium jepsonii J.M. Coult. & Rose [Rank 1B.2]   (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere).  Calflora
• Lessingia hololeuca Greene [Rank  3]  (review list). 2012 Field Survey
• Lessingia tenuis (A. Gray) Coville [Rank 4.3  (limited distribution). Calflora. 
• Malacothamnus arcuatus [Rank 1B.2]   (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere).  [Malacothamnus fasciculatus (Nutt. ex Torr. & A. Gray) Greene.] Calflora
• Monolopia gracilens A. Gray [Rank 1B.2]   (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere) 
• Piperia michaelii (Greene) Rydb. [Rank  4.2]  (limited distribution)
• Plagiobothrys chorisianus (Cham.) I.M. Johnst. var. hickmanii (Greene) I.M. Johnst. [Rank  4.2]  (limited distribution)
• Trifolium amoenum Greene [Rank 1B.1]  (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere)

Locally Rare plants in San Mateo Co. and Santa Cruz Mountains Bioregion

Notes

* Native and non-native, naturalized vascular-plants known to occur—or have occurred (historical records are considred those more than 25 years ago)—in the area of the Preserve. Almost all plants (98%) are documented by one or more herbarium vouchers in the Oakmead Herbarium or, occasionally, in other herbaria; without an herbarium voucher, the identification of a taxon may remain in doubt. In a very few cases, because of small occurrence size, a taxon is represented by digital photographs and/or a partial collection, e.g., single flower displaying diagnostic characters (DOC in the "document type" field).  There are even fewer plants listed based solely on a report by qualified botanists (REP in the "document type" field). 

Photographs  for most plants are linked to the Vascular Plant List entries. In addition to specimen labels and maps on many JROH specimen sheets, location, flowering time, and abundance records may also be found in Calflora. Historical observations from the Field Observations Database and the JRBP Poales E-Flora are being added to Calflora.

References relevant to the floristics of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. The history of the herbarium is described by Jewett (2005) Documenting Plant Diversity: Jasper Ridge's Herbarium. For Stanford's rich botany heritage see Timby (1998) The Dudley Herbarium: its origin, fate, and legacy at Stanford. Jasper Ridge grassland-related research is surveyed in Stromberg, M. et al. (2007) California Grasslands Ecology and Management and Lunch (2009) Primary production at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. 

Credits: Calochortus argillosus Trail 15, Alice Cummings; Searsville Willow woodland, Anne Warren