Plant Walk Leaders Needed

Share our unique desert plant world with visitors and friends of Anza Borrego Desert State Park – and raise needed funds for such projects as the Herbarium and Visitor Center Garden.

Ample opportunity for practice will be offered in the latter part of January, before extra leaders are needed in February and March for the much-awaited flowers. If you are a beginner, you will be paired with a more experienced walk leader, so you won’t be on your own.

To participate in this important educational and fund-raising program, or for further information, please contact Karin Vickars (karinvickrs [at] hotmail [dot] com. 

Thomas Spinks Speaks on Fossil Plants of Borrego

Tom Spinks, a State Park Paleontology Society volunteer who is studying the curation of fossil plant materials, will reveal how the fossils are identified in his talk about the “Petrified Woods of the Anza-Borrego Desert.” Between 2.5 and 4 million years ago, the climate was quite different from what it is today, and supported populations of birds, camels, horses, sloths, mastodons,  and other animals.  Their fossils and those of the plants are among the survivors.

Who: Thomas Spinks, Paleontologist
What: Fossil Plants of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
When: 10–11:30 am, Monday, January 12, 2015
Where: Visitor Center
Cost: Free; general public invited

For further information: Anza Borrego Foundation

Botany Society Certification Course Set

To be a member of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Botany Society requires active participation in a certification course. The 12-week course, held every Monday, run every Monday, from January 5 through March 30, 2015.

If you are interested in taking the course contact Judy Ramierez, Herbarium Manager, at judy.ramirez [at] parks.ca.gov.

Those Amazing Desert Plants!

Explore the Anza-Borrego Desert Park Visitor Center Garden with Park Interpreter Sally Theriault and discover some of the unique strategies that help plants survive here.

Date: Sunday December 21, 2014
Where: Visitor Center Garden
Time: 1:00 PM
Duration: 45 minutes

Fred Roberts to Speak to Botany Society

On Monday, December 8, 2014 the Botany Society will feature San Luis Rey author and publisher Fred M Roberts, Jr. a well-known cataloguer of wildlife and the plants they creep, crawl, and fly. He will present The Oaks of Sand Diego County. For eight years Roberts has worked as a botanist at UCI's Museum of Systematic Biology, where he personally picked and identified about half of the museum's 5,000 mounted specimens of Orange County plants--representing the largest Orange County plant collection anywhere.

Where: Discovery Lab, Visitor Center, 200 Palm Canyon Drive, Borrego Springs, CA 92004
When: Monday, December 8, 2014
Time: 10:00 to 11:30 AM
Cost: Free; public is invited