Join Loretta Brooks and Chuck Heimstadt on a field trip to explore the less visited south slopes of San Bruno Mountain. With its bright landscapes of large grassland areas critical to resident endangered butterflies, we expect to see some locally rare plants that are on the Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants of California, which is maintained by CNPS. (Rare plant ranks are described at www.cnps.org/rare-plants/cnps-inventory-of-rare-plants.)

From this watchlist we may see coast iris (Iris longipetala) Rank 4.2, coast rock cress (Arabis blepharophylla) Rank 4.3 and San Francisco wallflower (Erysimum franciscanum) Rank 4.2. We may also see the Coast onion, Allium dichlamydeum, and maybe in bloom mission blue butterfly host plants silver bush lupine (Lupinus albifrons var collinus) and California golden violets (Viola pedunculata). In addition, we expect to see niebla lichen, which occurs only in the fog belt of the California coast from Mendocino to Baja.