Near the town of Valentine is a huge ranch owned by the Miller family for the last few generations. They are nice enough to open their property up to the public a few times a year. Here is the next opportunity to visit the Miller Ranch and learn about some of the plants that are native in the area.
September 12- Botanizing on the Miller Ranch, Valentine L.C. Hinckley was a renowned botanist and chairman of the Department of Biology at Sul Ross for many years. Between 1941 and 1947 he studied the vegetation of the Clay Espy Miller Ranch in the Sierra Vieja Mountain Range and produced a plant list. Hinckley has been honored by having many West Texas plant species named for him. The Mountain Range that parallels the Rio Grande has four deeply eroded canyons and on the north and east contains pinion juniper woodlands and good grasslands where the western sides consist largely of desert scrub. There is a permanent stream in ZH Canyon with riparian vegetation. Patty Manning will guide our field trip and teach plant identification using the Hinckley report as a tool. The cutoff from Hwy. 90 to the ranch road is ¾ mile past Valentine, just before the Prada building. We will carpool for 11 miles on dirt road, following the fence over two cattle guards and through the Chilicote Gate. Bring a lunch to eat after we climb to the spring. Carpool from Alpine, Marfa and Fort Davis, times TBA.
To find out more on The Native Plant Society of Texas, Big Bend Chapter log on below:
http://www.npsot.org/BigBend/programs.html
Enjoy, Derrick
Tags: Big Bend Chapter, botanizing, botany, jeff davis county, Miller Ranch, mountain, native, Native Plant Society of Texas, nature, outdoors, plants, presidio county, sierra vieja, texas, Valentine
