Re: Mediterranean Oregon?

Loren,

You make some good points about the long gradient, and
it is also useful to be reminded that the longer rain
season doesn't necessarily correspond with rain
sufficient to overide the evaporation rate of soil and
plant respiration. We here in the San Francisco Bay
Area tend to associate almost any rainfall in May to
October as changing the mediterannean climate
equation.  There are huge difference in Medit climates
world wide, it was surprising to me to experience
humidity and rainfall in summer in Italy, and periodic
summer showers in parts of Spain and Portugal, as well
as the greater heat associated with an inland sea and
calmer currents and winds as compared to our ocean
derived winds. 

I didn't expect the results to be so radically
different.  Summer day time high temps as well as
night time temps along the Andalucian coast reminded
me more of Baja California than our local conditions. 
Wind seems to play a much larger role in the Western
Cape ecology than it does here, and fogs were not
generated off the ocean as much as they were derived
from interior winds from the central plateau
descending towards the coast.

These widely differing variations upon a Mediterannean
climate make for varied gardening styles and
techniques.  Our local foggy and cool summer climate
often seems more similar to subtropical or high
elevation subtropical cloudforests than a typical
mediterannean climate, and so many of the plants from
these areas seem well adapted to growth here with just
abit of supplemental summer irrigation.  The fact that
it doesn't generally rain at all here in summer also
makes most safe to plant without fear of escaping into
the wild,  and in fact may recommend them over exotic
medit climate plants from other regions that are much
more capable of naturalizing in the wild.

I know from personal experience that I've had better
luck with many subtropicals and desert species than
using plants from the PNW, which in my conditions
require more, not less water than my exotic
subtropicals/desert plants to do well, and often seem
to resent the distinct lack of winter chilling and
dormancy period in a typical bayside winter. 

I guess I also tend to assume that most mediterannean
plants don't have much frost tolerance or resistance
to the very wet winters in combination with cold that
places like Portland and Seattle can get.  This surely
reflects my bias for the longer blooming, extended
growing season of medit plants from the warmer regions
of medit climates world-wide.  We don't need to plant
for cold hardiness here, but instead seek out those
plants that exhibit less summer dormancy under our
local conditions.  Planting for shade to protect from
summer heat is also not an issue here, and is highly
distinct from the more normal hot summers of almost
all the other medit climate regions.
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