For years, the federally endangered San Mateo thornmint was known from only one location at Edgewood Natural Preserve in Redwood City. In the last two seasons, Creekside Science has seeded three new locations within the Preserve, bringing the total number of San Mateo thornmint to 7,549 in May 2017, its highest since we began monitoring in 2007. This January, we seeded a new location at nearby Pulgas Ridge, thanks to funding and support from San Francisco Water, Power and Sewer. We hope to be instrumental in creating the five self-sustaining populations required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Plan to downlist this taxon. Other partners include Friends of Edgewood, Yerba Bioadvocacy, San Mateo County Parks, California Native Plant Society, U.C. Berkeley Botanical Garden, San Mateo County Parks Foundation, Mellam Family Foundation, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Mountain in the mid 1980s. On March 2 and 3 2017, Creekside Science biologists collected 3630 caterpillars from Coyote Ridge in San Jose and released them on the main ridge of San Bruno Mountain. The larvae immediately started munching English plantain, a non-native used by other closely related checkerspot populations. The cool coastal environment, robust perennial hostplant, and extensive habitat are encouraging aspects of this project. This project may show that we can reintroduce extirpated species without the technical challenges and expense of restoring all historical conditions.
We are very excited to publicly report that our medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae (L.) Nevski) treatments at Edgewood Preserve have been an enormous success. Our treatments started in 2009 with medusahead infestations spanning some 5-6 acres of the preserve grasslands. As we completed our 2014 seasonal mow, staff botanists observed only a few individuals throughout the treatment area. Our timed mowing has been extremely successful in reducing the invasive by > 99% according to our annual monitoring which occurs before any mowing.
