This trail begins at Dawson Saddle, mile marker 69.60, which is the highest elevation on the Angeles Crest Highway. The trail which is 1.8 miles long climbs and meets the Pacific Crest Trail between 9,138' Throop Peak to the south and 8,396' Mt. Lewis to the north. Dawson Saddle and Dawson Peak are both named for Ernest Dawson, the President of the Sierra Club in the mid-1930's. Tom Chester's Angeles Crest Highway page gives the following information: "The USGS gives 7,903' [for Dawson Saddle] on the topo map and with their Geographic Names Information System. The road sign gives 7,901'. But the difference of 2' is negligible compared to the 7,986' given by Robinson in The San Gabriels! That doesn't seem to be a typo since Robinson also says that during the construction of the highway, some wanted to add 14' of dirt fill so the sign could say an even 8,000'." This trail was done in August so many species had finished blooming. For another Dawson Saddle photo gallery, see http://www.calflora.net/recentfieldtrips/dawsonsaddle09.html which was done in June 2009.

Mousetail ivesia
Ivesia santolinoides
Rosaceae
[Named for Yale University pharmacologist and professor Eli Ives, 1779-1861]

Alpine sulphur-flowered buckwheat
Eriogonum umbellatum var. minus
Polygonaceae

Tyge Boecher was a Danish botanist, evolutionary biologist, plant ecologist and phytogeographer, born in Copenhagen, an authority on Arctic vegetation and the flora of Greenland based on field work he did in Greenland, Denmark, and various European mountain regions. He was a professor of botany at the University of Copenhagen for 25 years from 1954 to 1979. He was a prolific scientific writer, leaving some 250 scholarly books and articles. He was a co-founder of Flora Europaea and he authored the Flora of Greenland (1968).  Thanks to Boechera authority Dr. Ihsan Al-Shehbaz at the Missouri Botanical Garden for the following information: "Tyge Boecher worked (1951-1969) on a group of species then referred to as members of the genus Arabis. He did a splendid job. Askel and Doris Love recognized his contribution and named the genus Boechera after him.”  He added that the pronunciation of the generic name should be boo'-ker-a.

California fuchsia
Epilobium canum ssp. latifolium
Onagraceae

Davidson's lotus
Acmispon nevadensis var. davidsonii
Fabaceae
[Named for George Davidson, 1825-1911]

Wax currant
Ribes cereum var. cereum
Grossulariaceae

The species name 'andromedea' refers to Andromeda, daughter of Ethiopian King Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. Mythology has it that the Queen boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, the sea nymphs who often accompanied Poseidon, and so he punished her by flooding the Ethiopian coast and sending a sea monster to ravage its inhabitants. An oracle told the King that he had to sacrifice his daughter so she was chained to a rock as an offering to the monster. Perseus, the son of Zeus, who had just slain the Medusa, happened by on his flying sandals and saw the unfortunate maiden, fell in love with her, slew the monster, and married her. Thomas Nuttall published the name Pterospora andromedea in 1818 because he thought the plant was similar to some of those in the genera Andromeda, a species of which had been found in 1732 in Lapland by Carl Linnaeus who used that name because the plant supposedly reminded him of the story of Perseus and Andromeda.

Rock buckwheat
Eriogonum saxatile
Polygonaceae