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This fascinating Galium was photographed at ~9000' elevation, along the crest of the Sierra San Pedro Martir. It was found in the vicinity of the locale referred to as 'Yerba Buena' in the annotated plant list for the Sierra San Pedro Martir (or 'SSPM') published by Thorne, Moran, and Minnich (see map on pg. 45 of PDF here). Those authors indicate this species, Galium wigginsii, is endemic to the SSPM.

I've loved these red-flowered Galium species ever since seeing my first one years ago. Panning around the full-size versions of the images in this post (at their associated Flickr links) will give a feel for the interesting finer scale structure of this plant, and corroborate the characters discussed below.

The following is a summary of the character sequence encountered in walking these photos through the Galium key on pg. 477 of Ira Wiggin's 1980 'Flora of Baja California':

1) Flower not individually subtended by bracts; midribs and margins of leaves not conspicuously white; 2) Fruits bearing coarse, stiffish, straight 'specialized hairs'; 3) Flowers many, in terminal and axillary inflorescences greatly exceeding the subtending leaves; 4) Plants polygamous; corollas red with lobes attenuate; 5) Leaves and stems minutely velvety puberulent longer hairs rarely present); 6) Leaf blades widest at or below the middle, gradually tapered toward apex; lower leaves wider & shorter than upper ones; among granitic boulders in Yellow-Pine forest, Sierra San Pedro Martir, endemic to Baja California: Jul-Sep...........G. wigginsii Dempster

The choices seemed very clear at each step above, except for 5)...where one has to choose between ''Leaves & stems minutely velvety puberulent'' vs. ''Leaves & stems glabrous to hispid (not velvety pubescent)''. If one goes with ''leaves & stems hispid'' choice, the result in Wiggins is G. wrightii...which is on both the plant list of Thorne, Moran, and Minnich and on the more current and complete plant list by Jon Rebman given to the SSPM Jepson Workshop participants. Below are some links to help compare these two taxa:

Galium wigginsii: Two herbarium sheet images from SEINET; a flowering stem image from V. Sosa; a seed image from RSABG; Galium wrightii: Photos and an herbarium sheet from SEINET; two images from R. Kleinman; four images from plantsystematics.org; and descriptions from Jepson's ''A Flora of California'' and the Jepson eflora page.

The two species are clearly very closely related...in particular, they both have epithets beginning with the letter 'w'. (Just trying to see if you're still awake :-). Also, descriptions and images of wrightii consistently indicate thinner, more linear leaves; and longer pedicels, among other things. Most importantly, I'm pretty sure that when the group encountered these plants in the field, Jon said they were Galium wigginsii, although I was always way behind taking photographs...and my memory isn't foolproof.

Whatever you want to call it, it's a great plant! :-)