Lotis Blue Butterfly Recovery Plan - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

is stained dark brown with the tannins leached from the peat.
Soils at the site are formed on Pleistocene beach deposits and belong
to the Noyo series. Underlying these deposits at a depth of about 30
meters is the Franciscan Formation, consisting of graywac ke sands tone.
These beach deposits lay on a series of five elevated marine terraces,
each about 100,000 years older than the lower adjacent one. The water
tab1 e is frequently within 1 t o 2 v of the surface (Barbour and Pfajor
1977).
Past and Present Pi stribution
Historically, the lotis blue butterfly has been found at several
coastal local i ties (Figure 1) in Mendocino, northern Sonoma and
possibly northern Marin Counties (Ti lden 1965; J. el ferl, pers.
comm. ). Unfortunately, museum records general 1 y do not indicate
precise enough data to accurately locate these additional sites. No
records for 5onoma County were noted in collections at the Essig
Museum of Entomology (University of Cal ifornia, Berkeley), Cal ifornia
Academy of Sciences, Los Angeles County Museum, nor in the personal
col 1 ect ion of Dr. John Emmel .
Since la77, the lotis blue butterfly has been known from one area
about 4.3 kilometers north of the torn of Nendocino, Mendocino
County, California. Arnold (1978, 1980) searched several other wet
3
' Mr. Jacques He1 fer, Natural ist, Pendocino County.