RE: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Hi Pam and all - there is a very interesting 1978 book about the date palm written by an American woman whose father went to the Middle East in the 1910's  to collect different strains of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) for the industry in California - I wonder if I can lay my hands on it now? The illustrations show very clearly that the strains had very different patterns of growth from compact and dumpy to tall and whispy. ALL of them needed artificial pollination by hand to produce fruit. There is also Phoenix theophrtasti from around the Med, a multi trunked relatively short species.  The book is by Hilda Simon, THE DATE PALM - Bread of the Desert, pub. by Dodd, Mead & Co. NY


On Sun 13/06/10 6:13 PM , "Pamela Steele" pamela.steele@re-taste.com sent:
We have 'date' palms here in the Costa Blanca but no dates. There seems to be confusion about 'date palms which I cannot resolve.  I have a Phoenix dactiflora which is called a Date Palm? ( I am also told it could be a Phoenix sylvestris...more confusion!)  here but it is not that very thin bendy date palm which you see in the Middle east. Personally I don't think Phoenix dactiflora is the 'real' date palm.....but you may know different
Pamela
Costa Blanca, Spain
 
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
-   Kahlil Gibran
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu]On Behalf Of Cali Doxiadis
Sent: 13 June 2010 09:20
To: TalkingPoints@plantsoup.com; margn@internode.on.net
Cc: medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Re: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Nor do they flourish, let alone produce, anywhere in Greece, whose mediterraneanness (is that a word?) has never been disputed.
Cali, in Corfu, Greece
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2010 1:05 AM
Subject: Re: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Where date palms grow or where they produce?  Date palms grow in coastal California   but they don't make dates anywhere other than the desert (as far as I know).

Nan 


On Jun 11, 2010, at 4:01 AM, margn@internode.on.net wrote:






----- Original Message -----
From: margn@internode.on.net
To: diapteron@hawaii.rr.com
Sent: Fri 11/06/10 8:29 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Yes, it is a very interesting question. The olive tree as marker has been raised by Ferdinand Braudel in his exhaustive discussion about THE MED - good reading and very wide ranging but it does take some effort to get through 2 vols drawn on History since Phillip 2 of Spain. There is another theory that says where the date palm grows (Ibn Batutah - Moorish scholar as I recall) is the marker.


 

cheers


 

trevor n.



On Fri 11/06/10 6:34 PM , "Mach Fukada" diapteron@hawaii.rr.com sent:

I like this one.  Olives are fruiting and spreading here in Kula, Maui.
 
MTF
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 8:48 PM
Subject: Re: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Pamela--facile though it is, this rule of thumb has always worked for me: If the olive tree grows and bears fruit, the climate is mediterranean.
Cali, Corfu, Greece
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2010 9:36 AM
Subject: RE: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

Very interesting!.  I have often thought about this.  In my opinion all of Spain is not Mediterranean climate. The Central area (Madrid and surrounds)has a type of Continental climate with snow in the winter and can be very hot in summer) and the north (Galicia and Asturias) has an Atlantic temperate climate, lots of rain. (its called Green Spain!)  Where I live on the Costa Blanca like all of the coast of Spain has a typical Mediterranean climate.  It's mostly dry for several months in summer and yes we do have rain sometimes and it comes in short sharp downpours.  Its great! 
Pamela
Costa Blanca, Spain
 
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
-   Kahlil Gibran
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu]On Behalf Of Michael Mace
Sent: 11 June 2010 08:01
To: 'medit plants forum'
Subject: What exactly is a mediterranean climate anyway?

At first glance that's a stupid question. We all know what a mediterranean climate is -- it's dry warm summers and cool wet winters. That's like asking what a mountain is; we all know one when we see one.
Or do we? In the eastern United States, the Appalachians are considered a mountain range. In northern India they'd be foothills. I think we have a similar problem with mediterranean climates. For example, the specific weather that people call "mediterranean" in much of Europe is quite a bit different from the specifics California. In fact, the more closely you look at them the more different they start to look.
Speaking as a Californian who successfully grows some mediterranean plants and fails consistently with others, I'm convinced that many of my struggles have come from a naive assumption that everything "mediterranean" needs the same basic conditions.
We've had a lot of discussion of this topic over at the Pacific Bulb Society, and a couple of us ended up creating charts and maps comparing the various mediterranean climates around the world.  The results were interesting to me, and I wanted to share them here.  A few highlights...
--South Africa and Western/Southern Australia have the mildest climates. Compared to the other mediterranean regions, they are a bit milder in winter and have less severe droughts in summer.
--California's mediterranean climate may be the hardest on plants. It generally has colder winters and drier summers than the other regions.
--Coastal Oregon and Washington have weather that resembles a mediterranean pattern in many ways. Officially, climatologists do not classify them as mediterranean, but for plant-growing purposes I think of them as semi-mediterranean. The same thing applies to south-central Chile.
--Central Chile's pattern is similar to California's, although a bit milder in many areas.
--Europe is a mix of all the other regions. Spain, southern France, Italy, and Morocco/Algeria all have comparatively moist summers. The Greek islands and the Middle East have very dry summers.
If you're interested in checking out the maps, you can see them here:http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/MediterraneanMaps  Your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
I should also note that Sean O'Hara has put up some interesting comparative climate information on the gimcw website here:http://www.gimcw.org/climate/
Mike
San Jose, CA (zone 9, min temp 20F / -7C)

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