Pinnacles National Park in spring, part 2

This post is the second of a series. To see more Pinnacles spring photos, click here.

Sundari, Queen of the Flowers

It is remarkable to me now how much there was to shoot in a park that's relatively small, on a trip that only lasted three days. Fascinating geology aside, biodiversity is what makes the Pinnacles so full of photographic potential. When I was there in April 2011, I pointed my camera at all those lifeforms rather mindlessly. I had no idea what anything was called, and no time to look it up in a guidebook. Later, I did some reading, and while I didn't learn the names of everything shown in my Pinnacles gallery, I did find out that there's even more in that park than I'd suspected. Also, I learned things about lichens that answered some of my lingering questions.

Note to self: when I take a close-up shot of part of a plant, I MUST remember to take another photo of the entire plant. Otherwise I will drive myself crazy trying to solve the mystery of just what species some random petal edge belongs to.  

On left, branch with lichens: the yellow might be Chrysothrix, a leprose lichen, and the cuplike gray-green one is probably Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia. On right, buds of Pinus sabiniana, aka gray pine, a tree whose nuts were a staple of the Chalone Native American diet.

Okay, so about the lichens. They are everywhere at Pinnacles, drawing the eye with unexpected colors and textures. I looked at many a lichen in the park and wondered exactly what kind of a thing it is, and how it gets its food from the rocks and trees it clings to. I learned later that a lichen is a dual organism, a symbiotic partnership between a fungus and an alga. The fungus surrounds the alga, sometimes penetrating the algal cell wall, creating a new structure called the thallus. This arrangement works out especially well for the fungus in terms of deriving nutrients. Some say it's not exactly a mutualistic relationship; the fungus needs the partnership to live, but the alga could exist without the fungus. (Scientists argue all the time about the terms that describe symbiosis. Close relationships are just inherently controversial, I guess.)

The algal cells in lichen perform photosynthesis, as plants do, to break down carbon dioxide into organic carbon sugars. These feed both symbiotic partners. The fungus protects the alga by retaining water and providing a larger capture area of mineral nutrients; it can also provide minerals from whatever substrate the pair is attached to, such as a rock on the High Peaks Trail. If cyanobacterium are part of the situation, they can provide addtional nutrients by fixing atmospheric nitrogen – that is, converting the nitrogen into ammonia. Some lichens are tripartate, meaning there are three symbionts: the fungus, the green alga, and the cyanobacterium.

If you are starting to get the idea that lichens are a complicated and mysterious subject, you're right. Biologists didn't even recognize them as symbiotic organisms for a long time, not until about 1867, when Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener spent a lot of time looking at them with a microscope and described their dual nature. Before that, the common belief was that all living organisms were autonomous. Discovering the true nature of lichens helped scientists begin to understand symbiosis and apply it to other areas of biology.

Lichens are therefore important in the history of biological science. I find it poetic and appropriate that they coexist here with the Pinnacles rocks, which were important in their own way in the history of geological science. The discovery that the Pinnacles rocks matched the Neenach rocks found 200 miles south greatly helped the theory of plate tectonics gain widespread acceptance. Symbiosis, plate tectonics, both ideas got major assists from the stuff you see the most of in this park. 

Two different types of crustose lichen growing on volcanic rock surfaces.

Reading about lichens sent me down a rabbit hole of fascinating information, especially the details about how they reproduce, but I'll spare you the lichen term paper and just share a few facts that interested me the most. First fact: lichens appear in many different forms, and these forms are determined by the genetic material of the fungus part of the lichen – but the development into these forms can't happen without the algal partner. When the fungus is separated from its partner and grown on its own, it doesn't take on the lichen shape. Instead, it becomes an undifferentiated mass of fungal growth called hyphae.

Second interesting fact: people eat lichens. I had no idea! Very few lichens are poisonous, and most of the poisonous ones are yellow. People have cooked and eaten lichens all over the world, and still do. One of the most interesting examples of this, to me, is the consumption of partially digested reindeer lichen that has been removed from the rumen (part of the stomach) of caribou and reindeer that have been killed. This has been done, and is still done, by far north peoples in North America and Siberia, who mix it with raw fish eggs and call the result "stomach ice cream." I have to admit that I am not as grossed out by the sound of that dish as I would expect to be, and am in fact very curious about what it tastes like. Do they eat it with a spoon, or spread it on toast points like caviar? 

Third fact: lichens can survive unprotected in the vacuum of space, where they are bombarded by cosmic radiation and exposed to extreme temperatures, with no ill effects. When sent into space for two weeks, they went into a dormant state and then sprang back to life and continued to grow upon their return to Earth. This is amazing, but not all that surprising, considering the wide variety of extreme environments they can inhabit on Earth – such as toxic slag heaps from copper mines, which cause them to turn verdigris green. The ability of lichens to survive such conditions has interesting implications for the transfer of life between planets. 

And that's probably enough lichen facts for one blog post. My original plan was to write about the different physical types of lichens, but I got sidetracked into stomach ice cream. It just goes to show what an unexpected trajectory a lichen story can take. I'll save the morphology for another time, as there will certainly be more lichens, and lichen photos, in my future. They seem to show up everywhere. And they are so incredibly beautiful.

Another crustose lichen, another volcanic rock surface...

Clockwise from top left: Eschscholzia californica, aka California poppy on Bench Trail; burl spikes on tree without bark; bark of Pinus sabiniana, aka gray pine or digger pine; some kind of leaves (seeing the rest of the plant would be helpful here!)

Lichens aren't the only organisms worth photographing at Pinnacles National Park. The park's biodiversity is stunning, and its continuing existence is greatly assisted by the lack of a road that runs all the way through. Route 146 comes in on the east and west sides of the park, but these entrances don't meet in the middle. The central area, where the Pinnacles are, is shielded from all but foot traffic. The soil has been undisturbed, and native plant species thrive here, consequently creating habitats for native animal species. Because the land has been protected for so long, it is a perfect example of the central California coastal ecosystem that is being destroyed elsewhere by urban development.

Pinnacles is located at the intersection of several larger geographical regions in California, where many species are at the edge of their habitat. The park also exhibits great variation in topography, elevation, and daily temperatures within its borders. All of these intersecting boundaries create numerous ecological niches. I learned later that there are five distinct ecological zones in the park, intricately woven together: chaparral, grassland, woodland, rock and scree, and riparian. The differences between these zones were obvious even to my untrained eyes as I walked around and hiked the trails.

The Pinnacles National Park website says that the park contains habitats for 149 species of birds, 49 mammals, 22 reptiles, 8 amphibians, 69 butterflies, 40 dragonflies and damselflies, and many thousands of other invertebrates. There are nearly 400 bee species, the greatest known density of bee species per square mile of any place on Earth. And that's just the animals! Lichens come in at 293 species (and counting), and plant species are in the hundreds as well. There was no way I could photograph all of this life, let alone identify the species I shot. But that didn't stop me from trying.     

Marah fabaceus, aka California manroot or wild cucumber

Clockwise from top left, let's hope I'm right about this: Castilleja affinis, aka Indian Paintbrush; Carex barbarae, aka Santa Barbara sedge or valley sedge; Erysimum capitatum, aka Douglas' Wallflower or Western Wallflower

Clockwise from top left: raindrops on leaves of some kind of rose, or is it blackberry? hmm..; Pholistoma auritum, aka blue fiesta flower; lovely large millipede in Bear Gulch visitor center parking lot; raindrops on grass;  crustose lichen on rocks; darkling beetle

In the end, we only spent two nights at Pinnacles. The second night, it rained a little, and I awoke to find the top of my Tent Cot covered with small black ants. They had been washed off of the tree above me sometime in the night. I turned the Tent Cot upside down and shook it free of the tiny creatures. We packed our things and headed over to the trailhead for one last hike. I was thinking that it would be nice to have a whole week at this park, just to get more photos with the 24-70 lens. Unfortunately, I didn't get that, nor did we get even one more hike. A rainstorm began almost as soon as we started up the trail. We ran back to the parking lot, and said our goodbyes to this magnificent place from the shelter of our vehicle. 

The rain that had halted our hike disappeared as soon as we left the park. We drove through the rolling hills of San Benito County, where everything was soft and green and peaceful; our storm was now just a darkening of the sky in the distance. At Immaculate Conception Church in Tres Pinos we stopped to take pictures of the rock grotto and sculptures. But the photo I like best from that location is not of religious statuary; it's one you see below. Something about that photo inspires strange and wonderful stories in my mind.

Half an hour later we were eating lunch in Hollister, and from there it was only an hour until we were home. Our tiny vacation full of many habitats, species, and fault lines had come to an end.   

I call this one BBQ Half Chicken Dinner October.