We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.
Last Saturday we picked a hike that would not be too long or too strenuous and so we headed south to the spot where the gas pipline right of way crosses a road on the south side of Bobs Lake. Some of us had done a very long hike up to Dome Rock and Cathedral Lake just two days earlier and welcomed a hike with few steep up and down sections and the gently undulating roads in the Angel Lake area were just perfect. I think I have often spoken about the fact that our island is home to an unusually large number of rare plants and animals and so it should come as no surprise to learn that a couple of the plants we saw on the hike are quite rare in BC. One is an uncommon species of Grapefern, but I have seen it a few times already and it was first collected by a visiting botanist about 15 years ago. The other rare plant was a kind of water lily growing in Angel Lake close by the spot where we had lunch. I had never seen it before and no botanist has ever reported finding it on Texada or the Sunshine Coast. It has however been collected a few times in the lower mainland area and on southern Vancouver Island. I think I was lucky it had a single flower that was close enough to the shore for me to get a good photograph. The common name is Water Shield, and the world distribution includes Canada, the US and Central and South America, even in the tropics. There is just the one species in this genus.
JD.
Water Shield in flower in Angel Lake. Brasenia schreberi is an aquatic plant found only in a few locations in south western BC.
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