This is the first of 27 posts of the plants that have been called D. abramsii abramsii from three different locations in the Kenworthy Area of San Jacinto Mountain. All the plants seemed identical in the field.

Relative to the first location, the second location is 0.1 mile (160 m) west / northwest, and the third location is 1.95 miles (3.14 m) northeast.

There are 7 posts from the first location; 6 posts from the second location; and 14 posts from the third location, which spanned a larger area than the first two locations. In the third location, all of the posts except two were within 300 feet (90 m) of each other, with two posts 0.21 miles (340 m) away.

There are 12 vouchers of D. abramsii abramsii from the three locations posted here, plus two nearby locations that have the same geologic substrate as these three locations. The last three Dudleya experts, Reid Moran, Ken Nagai, and Stephen McCabe, all have determined these plants as D. abramsii abramsii.

The plants appear to fit D. abramsii abramsii except for two characteristics.

First, their corolla color is different from the plants in San Diego County. The corolla of these plants is the same bright yellow as the much more abundant D. saxosa that grows in different geologic formations in the surrounding area, not whitish yellow with red striations along the petal midrib.

Second, the habitat in which they grow is quite different. All of the plants were growing in the same geologic formation, the alluvial Bautista Formation consisting of a matrix of large rock fragments up to ~20 cm or so, mixed with smaller large rock fragments, sand and dirt. This habitat is very different from the "rocky crevices" of plants in San Diego County. The following post shows a typical example of the exposed Bautista Formation in its first pix:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/122609535

It is possible that these plants are an undescribed taxon, but for now, it seems best to place them under D. abramsii abramsii, following the lead of the Dudleya experts that have examined them. That also makes it much easier to find all the iNat obs of these plants.

Every plant we saw was very small, with rosettes of 3 cm tall x 3 cm wide or smaller, with almost all having ascending to erect leaves. And most rosettes were completely dried up! I'm very curious as to how these plants recover to produce new rosettes next year.

For a picture of a fresh rosette of one plant in this same location, see:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46457151

The vast majority of the plants were growing within other plants, making the rosettes unavailable to be eaten by deer or cows, and very difficult for us to see and photograph. This is probably the result of heavy grazing pressure from cows that are allowed to graze here. In one area, there are huge numbers of prickly pear cactus and Gutierrezia sarothrae, the only plants cows don't eat, in what was a probably a heavily-overgrazed area.

The inflorescences of these plants were all small, 14 to 28 cm tall, just barely getting above the plants they were growing in.

There were no other Dudleya taxa in the areas we surveyed.

I've tried to make each post contain just the pix from a single plant, but a few posts show several different very nearby plants.