Re: Good Books on California Plant Communities
- Subject: Re: Good Books on California Plant Communities
- From: d* f*
- Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 09:11:56 -0700 (PDT)
--- Glenn Breayley <valhalla@iafrica.com> wrote:
>
> Hi - Glenn here
> I second David's recommendation on
> Cowling/Richardsons book Fynbos. If you're
> going to buy one book on this part of the world, its
> got to be the one.
> And, as others point out, its such a pity I can't
> find something similar on
> California or Chile.
> Is anyone able to recommend a similar work on the
> Med. Basin ?
Glenn and others outside California:
A good book that is not nearly as complete or
comprehensive about California's mediterranean plant
communities, but does give a very good overview of the
differences in rainfall/climate/temperatures/growing
seasons throughout California, as well as an emphasis
on sustainable garden design and appropriate plant
lists and design concepts is the 1992 book by Bob
Perry, Landscape Plants for Western Regions, An
Illustrated Guide to Plants for Water Conservation,
ISBN 0-9605988-3-9. Although this book isn't just
about California natives, but also includes other
region's mediterranean plants, it is a good reference
book for the library, and would help those outside
California(and locally as well), understand the
incredible diversity of California microclimates and
pecularities of our mediterranean climate in general.
This book covers some of the same topics raised in the
Cowling/Richardson book on South African Fynbos, such
as evapotranspiration rates for the different
microclimates, estimated water needs for landscape
plants throughout California, escaped exotics,
utilizing natives, etc. It does not cover the topic
of fire ecology in native landscapes to nearly the
extent that the Fynbos book does, and also is mute on
the point of whether planted trees in our chapparal
vegetation affect watershed runoff and storage
capacity to the extent that they seem to in South
Africa.
I may have mentioned this before to the group, but I
do wonder if the greater significance of summer fog
drip along the coast and the localized summer rainfall
effect created by trees such as
Pines/Eucalypts/Redwoods in fog belt areas is a net
increase of available water within a watershed, rather
than decrease such as has been documented in the
Western Cape of South Africa. As far as I know, this
is not a well researched topic here in California, but
I am sure someone in the group can prove me wrong, or
point me in the right direction...
In Berkeley, northern California
Where the summer pattern of weather is fully
established, balmy days of almost hot weather followed
by several days of marine layer fog to cool us all
off, our natural summer air conditioning... (While
just over the East Bay Hills it is sunny and warm
every day, as the fog burns off so much earlier, or
doesn't even make it there to cool things off)
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