James Dillane

James Dillane is a retired middle school science teacher from Escondido. A native San Diegan, he grew up camping and exploring the county with his family and with the Boy Scouts. He developed a passion for local botany, particularly rare and unusual plants, that became a life-long interest. He is a naturalist at Escondido’s Daley Ranch and volunteer director of the native plant garden at the Wild Animal (now Safari) Park.The Lake Hodges Native Plant Club sponsors a native plant garden in the Kupanda Falls Botanical Gardens area at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, California. This California Nativescapes Botanical Garden is the Club's main external project. At the request of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Horticulture Department, the LHNPC agreed to plan, plant, and maintain the garden. The Club has been maintaining the garden since 1991 when it was opened to the public on earth day.

Club members are responsible for planting, watering, weeding, and trail construction, etc. The San Diego Zoo Safari Park has assisted by providing shade shelters, drinking fountains and educational signs. The LHNPC does the extensive record-keeping required for a Botanical Garden.

James provides the following links for the convenience of ESP Explorers:

San Diego County Botanical Links

• • Jepson Manual 2nd Edition - keys, descriptions, maps, photos, etc.

  • San Diego County Plant Atlas - wonderful resources

• Native and Introduced Plants of Southern California

  • All of Tom Chester’s Plant Trail Guides

  • Plants of Southern California - Tom's Links

  • Daley Ranch Jewel of Escondido - Rob Mustard

  • California Native Plant Society (CNPS) - San Diego Chapter

  • CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants

  • San Diego Wildflowers - pictures and keys

  • Calflora.net - Michael Charter’s wonderful photo collection, plus Latin meanings

  • WAYNE'S WORD - Wayne Armstrong’s biology site with emphasis on local botany

  • Plants of San Diego County California - Michael Simpson at SDSU

  • Rick Halsey’s California Chaparral Institute

  • California Natural Diversity Database

  • Checklist for San Dieguito Watershed - caution: not complete or field checked

Other San Diego County Links

• • High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN)

    • - a page of remote cameras with views of San Diego County

  • CalTopo - topographic, shaded relief, historical topographic maps, aerial photos and more

• Geological Maps

  • Historical Topographic Maps San Diego County

High Performance Wireless Research & Education Network

• • This is the HPWREN page with all the animations. I don't know how you get here from the home page, but this page links to the animation I showed as well as to animations of fire, cloud formation, thunderstorms, etc. They may take a while to load and do not come with descriptions, so it takes some time to find the gems.

  • This Fire Recovery Animation is from the La Cima site in the Cuyamacas.

  • The animations that include tp-w-iqeye are from the camera (not currently working) on top of Toro Peak in Riverside County's Santa Rosa Mountains.

  • This animation shows a late-season storm flowing (if you watch it, you will understand the use of this term) up onto the 8000 ft. ridge. In the last 30 seconds, you can see the snow start to fly. This is a 58 meg download.

  • The animations that begin with dp- are from the infared camera at Dos Picos park (no longer there) looking east to Ramona. They include wonderful animations of cloud formation in action, thunderstorms, and even a rainbow (without the color).