Since 2007, the San Diego Natural History Museum has been building and maintaining a floristic inventory and herbarium for Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (Base). In the initial stages of this project, Curator Dr. Jon Rebman and Department Associate Margie Mulligan examined the existing Base herbarium, verified voucher specimen identifications, and determined collection needs.
Following that initial assessment, Museum staff have assumed management of the existing herbarium and conducted annual field surveys, focusing efforts on potentially rich floristic areas and collecting at peak flowering times, with the goal of documenting as many native and naturalized plants on Base as possible.
As of the completion of 2019 surveys, the team has documented the full floristic diversity (1,123 taxa!) of the Base, added over 500 species to the existing Base inventory (i.e., Camp Pendleton Flora Checklist), and recorded more than 60 species not previously known to occur in San Diego County. In addition, multiple sensitive and species for which records had only been collected prior to 1950 have been discovered or re-discovered, and records have been updated with exact population coordinates and new scientific vouchers.
All specimens collected by museum staff have been added to the SD Herbarium (housed at the San Diego Natural History Museum) and incorporated into the San Diego County Plant Atlas project. Information on known and new occurrences of sensitive and invasive plant species is also used to identify priority management tasks on Base.
