Documenting Tejon Ranch’s rich botanical resources has long been a Conservancy emphasis.

 

Over the years, professional botanists and plant laypeople alike have visited Tejon as part of structured botanical tours and hands-on workshops facilitated by the Conservancy. Working together with these groups, as well as with several expert botanists, the Conservancy has actively cataloged much of the Ranch’s flora, including endemics found nowhere else in the world and ultra-competitive non-native taxa threatening to transform the landscape.

 

Although nearly 1,000 native taxa have been identified, amounting to nearly 14 percent of California’s native flora, no doubt more plants await discovery, some of which may ultimately become new to science.

 

This information is used for native plant conservation and management efforts, both at the state level when developing regional conservation strategies, as well as at the local or landscape level as part of pasture-specific grazing and weed management activities.

 

With 240,000 acres of dedicated open space to steward and investigate, becoming intimately knowledgeable of the botanical resources that call Tejon home is imperative for ensuring the Ranch’s significant botanical assets not only persist in the landscape, but are enjoyed by future generations of plant enthusiasts.

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Among the many regions on the Ranch that been extensively surveyed for plant taxa are riparian and wetland enhancement areas. Under the Ranch-Wide Management Plan, we have been working with the Tejon Ranch Company to manage the way cattle rotate through riparian pastures, with the goal of increasing native species diversity and conservation values of these ecologically important sites. Species surveys have provided important baselines within riparian pastures. Check out the Sacatara Enhancement Pasture species list here.