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sean's questionaires

Sean
You ask for our local expression of the Mediterranean Climate. Mine is for
my nursery, Hortus, 15km. NE of Palma, Mallorca.

Rainfall. 600mm. but varies from dry SE corner of the island, (250mm.) to
1500mm. at Lluc in the hills. Very little  rain falls from mid-May to
mid-September a period when the evaporation rate is very high and
insolation fierce so that what rain does occasionally fall usually has
little effect.
Temperatures  Over much of the island there are only very infrequent
frosts, the nursery has a handful that may drop to -3 C once or twice a
year. But there has been an appreciable warming of the local climate, by
perhaps 2 C so that we have had no snow at the nursery now for more than 20
years.
Water All the island's water has, until recently, been  ground water at a
depth of 20-150m. with a pH of around 7.6 but it is heavy in bicarbonate
and therefore well buffered. In the last couple of years Palma has been
bringing water from Tarragona by tanker (60,000 tonner) and is establishing
a large reverse osmosis sea-water desalination plant. A major preoccupation
is that too great use of wells has in some places contaminated them with
salt drawn in from the sea. The same effect has also been seen with heavy
use of fertiliser.
Geology The island is an extension of the southern Spanish Sierra Nevada
and its strata is a tumultuous mixture of sandstone and limestone so that
prospecting for water is in most places a business that needs luck rather
than science.
Plants   Trees are predominantly evergreen Quercus ilex, Olea europaea,
Cupressus sempervirens, Pinus halepensis and Laurus nobilis.  Plants from
Cape Province do well, and many Australians  and some  New Zealand plants
too, but the former, like those from California too, often dislike the
calcium carbonates and high pH and the latter often require more humidity
than we can give them here.
	In fact pretty typical Mediterranean gardening			Hugo
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