Flora of the Bodie Hills
In my mid-’20s I was a graduate student in Botany at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. I was extremely fortunate to be able to devote the summers of 1979, ’80, and ’81 to a rambling exploration of the Bodie Hills in northern Mono County, collecting plant specimens for my Master’s Thesis—a local flora of the Bodie Hills. For weeks on end I drove my IH Scout around the backroads of the Bodie Hills, hiking solo up many remote peaks and canyons, bulging plant press under one arm. I camped and keyed plants among lodgepole pines beside a meadow at 9,000 feet on Virginia Creek, just outside the Bodie Hills on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada.
The thesis and its botanical nomenclature are now a bit dated, but may still be of interest to others with a passion for Great Basin and Sierra Nevada plants. The introduction presents a pretty good summary of the area’s geology and history. Here, then, is a link to a scanned, digital version of my thesis.
Flora of the Bodie Hills (PDF, 11.9 MB)
