Having made several trips to the Liebre Mts area this past spring, I wanted to try to get into a different part of it, so I decided on Fish Canyon. Coincidentally, the latest issue of Los Angeles magazine had a cover article on 10 great hikes and lo and behold one of them was Fish Canyon Narrows. So today I drove up the Grapevine past Castaic and turned onto Templin Highway. I drove to where it ends at a locked gate. In years past you could drive 2-1/2 more miles to Cienaga Campground and start your hike from there, but now that gate adds 5 round-trip miles to any excursion you plan. Fortunately, I had been granted the use of a key to that gate, so I continued on. The road, which is mostly dirt but paved in places, is seriously undermined and broken in places by the flow of water in the Lower Narrows about 1/2 mile from the campground, so I couldn't proceed safely beyond that point, but still it saved me 4 miles of walking on a hot, dusty road. Given that this is July and the Fish Canyon Narrows are not a higher-elevation location, I didn't have high expectations for there to be a great deal of flora in bloom, but I was able nevertheless to find some nice and interesting species. There is still water flowing through the Narrows, but earlier in the year or in a year with more rainfall there would probably be much more blooming. An upside-down V next to the common name indicates a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it on this field trip, and an asterisk indicates a non-native species.

Dunn's lobelia
Lobelia dunnii var. serata
Campanulaceae

Canchalagua
Zeltnera venusta (= Centaurium
venustum)
Gentianaceae

Sneezeweed
Helenium puberulum
Asteraceae

Lesser indian paintbrush
Castilleja minor ssp. spiralis
Scrophulariaceae

Creek monkeyflower
Mimulus guttatus
Phrymaceae

White sweetclover *
Melilotus albus
Fabaceae

California loosestrife
Lythrum californicum
Lythraceae

Southern cattail
Typha domingensis
Typhaceae

Scarlet monkeyflower
Mimulus cardinalis
Phrymaceae

Chalk dudleya
Dudleya pulverulenta
Crassulaceae

White alder
Alnus rhombifolia
Betulaceae