This was a follow-up hike to the recent Whitewater Canyon one, only this time I began at the gate of Mission Creek Preserve, a part of the Wildlands Conservancy's Sand to Snow Preserve System, and headed up canyon, crossing Mission Creek and then over the ridge into Whitewater Canyon, collecting some samples of the oaks I saw there to verify their identification. There were hardly any annuals at all, but the real treat was the Ziziphus which was in magnificent bloom and abundance, and scented the air around with a sweet fragrance. The soil was clearly very moist so it probably rained here yesterday, and given the amount of rain there has been, a few weeks of warm weather might produce a terrific bloom. A close microscopic inspection of the upper and lower surfaces of the oak leaves revealed the presence of fairly dense stellate hairs confirming my original identification of all the shrubs I looked at as Quercus cornelius-mulleri. An asterisk next to the common name indicates a non-native taxon.

White fiesta flower
Pholistoma membranaceum
Boraginaceae

Creosote bush
Larrea tridentata
Zygophyllaceae

Common fiddleneck
Amsinckia intermedia
Boraginaceae

Desert almond
Prunus fasciculata var. fasciculata
Rosaceae

Lotebush
Ziziphus parryi
Rhamnaceae

Royal goldfields
Lasthenia coronaria
Asteraceae

Blue dicks
Dichelostemma capitatum ssp. capitatum
Themidaceae

Strigose lotus
Lotus strigosus
Fabaceae