Sierra de San Pedro Mártir

Hi Everyone!

This past weekend I attended my “alternative” workshop, which was a Jepson Herbarium workshop focused on the flora of the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, Mexico. I had been looking forward to this trip for the last few months, and it completely exceeded all my expectations! The workshop was led by Jon Rebman, who is the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum; Jon’s intimate knowledge of this region as well as his passion for its preservation were remarkable. We started the trip out by driving from the UC San Diego campus to the Parque Nacional Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, which took quite a while (roughly 9 hours). However, the drive was very interesting because Jon pointed out vegetation all along the way! We drove through chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and coastal succulent scrub as we made our way up to the mountains. Sierra de San Pedro Mártir is the highest mountain range on the Baja California peninsula; its highest peak is Picacho del Diablo (Devil’s Peak), which stands at 10,157 feet. Although we didn’t go to the top of Picacho del Diablo, we did climb pretty high up into the mountains while we were there, hoping to find a few rare endemic plant species that were only located on granite rock outcrops at high elevations. We also hiked to a few meadows, which even though they were very dry this year, still hosted an array of plants, many of which were endemics! There were so many endemics!!!!!!!!

Here are some photos from my trip: