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Photo by Bill Gray; Bill Gray; mugiwara_kris
Photographer - Bill Gray; Sources: ESRI, USGS, NOAA; mugiwara_kris
Holmgren's owl's-clover
Orthocarpus holmgreniorum
NatureServe conservation status
Global (G-rank): G2
State (S-rank): S2
External links
Species range
Estimate from download of data from Utah Rare Plant Database August 2020. Geocat: 103 points found: Extent of Occurrence: 1445.033 km2. The species is found in the Wasatch Mountains, from areas north of Salt Lake City to southern Idaho. It grows on shallow, rocky, clay soils dominated by Artemisia arbuscula Nutt. subsp. thermopola Beetle (low sagebrush), Madia glomerata Hook. (tar weed), and associated grasses (Shultz and Smith 2017).
Threats or limiting factors
Very abundant in rockier soil patches. Seen frequently along trails, so hikers may be a threat, but this is unlikely due to the high abundance of this species.
Leila Shultz Aug. 2020 advises: "A primary population -- above the big bend on the approach to Tony Grove -- has been trampled by cattle this year. Where there were once hundreds of plants among the low sagebrush, I could find only five plants last week." (The primary population referred to is also the type locality.) Leila also advises via an 8/8/20 communication that she had expressed concern about the downward trend of this taxon to the local FS botanist who then was Mike Duncan about the general decline in the Orthocarpus population in 2017 while he was the FS botanist here. Additional searching including in Idaho has not revealed any additional occurrence. A healthy and apparently extensive population is known from the west slope of upper Cottonwood Canyon, just inside the Mt. Naomi Wilderness (reported by Dave Wallace, most recently observed on 8/9/20).
