After thoroughly investigating the flora along Pearblossom Highway and Black Butte Road and at Bob's Gap, we became aware of another area of extraordinary floristic value near Elizabeth Lake and on Munz Ranch Road. Elizabeth Lake Road or the N2 runs southeast to northwest through the Liebre Mountains past Elizabeth Lake and Lake Hughes, becoming Pine Canyon Road in one direction and Palmdale Boulevard in the other. Roads that intersect with Elizabeth Lake Road include Bouquet Canyon Road, San Francisquito Road, and Munz Ranch Road which begins at Elizabeth Lake Road and winds northwards toward the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. A group of us including Tom Chester, Clyde Golden, Walt Fidler, Adrienne Ballwey, Jane Tirrell and Harry Spilman had a wonderful and highly productive day in yet another area that clearly had benefitted from some localized rainfall to produce a spectacular bloom in an otherwise dry year. The pictures in this gallery were taken on 4/21/14. The symbol ^ next to the common name is for a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it on this field trip, and an asterisk is for a non-native species. Tom Chester's flora for this area is online
here. A website called PCT Names says: "Previously known as La Laguna de Chico Lopez (after a local Mexican ranchero), or just Rabbit Lake, Frank Latta repeats a story from longtime Tejon majordomo José Jesus Lopez that in 1849 Charles Wingfield and his wife Elizabeth were camped near the lake, and while going to get water she slipped and fell in. Other travelers teased Mrs. Wingfield about it, and gave the lake her name. The name caught on, and was in common use by the 1850s."
