This gallery is the result of several days of poking about in Horse, Poopout, and South Fork or Slushy Meadows. Horse Meadow is along the trail from the new South Fork trailhead on Jenks Lake Road to Poopout Hill and is the driest of the three. Poopout Meadow and Slushy Meadow both lie along the flume that carries water from the South Fork Santa Ana River to Jenks Lake. A walk along the little-known flume trail from Poopout Hill to just below the junction of the Dry and Dollar Lake trails is a wonderful experience in July and August, when the banks of the flume and the grassy meadows are filled with wildflowers. Most people who hike up the South Fork trail are probably completely unaware that they are passing within a few hundred yards of one of the most unique and rarest habitats in Southern California with plant species that grow here and nowhere else. As the photo gallery about the avalanche at Poopout Meadow shows, the flume trail is now difficult to traverse across the top of the meadow and it remains to be seen how the meadow will be affected by this natural disaster. Whereas the last gallery was mostly of trail species with a brief detour into the meadow, this gallery is mostly of meadow species with some additions from the trail. An upside-down V next to the common name indicates a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it during this field work, and an asterisk indicates a non-native species, of which there are few. Thanks to Jane Strong for identifying the butterfly and Hartmut Wisch for the sawfly. |
