Lifespans
- To: t*@pacbell.net
- Subject: Lifespans
- From: m* l*
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 06:08:58 GMT
I pretty much second everything Nan Sterman had to say. This is
such a variable with regard to soil, watering, and temperatures,
not to mention diseases and soil fungi (both beneficial and pathogenic),
that I am aware of no single source that has had the temerity to give
a list of plants and their average lifespans.
I once tried to compose an essay on the effect of the lifespan of
plants typical of certain cultures (Japan, for instance) on the design
of their gardens and vice versa. Gave up when I realized how complex and
poorly documented was the topic of average lifespan for plants.
That said, there are some certain overall principles I can state with
some trepidation:
Generally, the rate of growth of a tree or shrub is inversely proportional
to its lifespan.(Birch versus oak, ceanothus versus
camellia japonica which, to my knowledge, can live for centuries.)
If a plant has a reputation as being somewhat weedy or agressive,
it will probably have a long life (or maybe it only seems that way).
(crocosmia, though a corm that must eventually die, reproduces so
readily that once established, it will probably be with you forever,
barring nuclear winter)
And lastly, the life expectancy of the average plant sold at
Home Depot in June here in Sacramento is about three weeks.
Again speaking generally, the United States is not noted culturally
for long lived gardens (or long lived anything else for that matter).
In my time here in California, I've seen a lot of nice landscape sacrificed
on the altar of progress. I'd be real surprised if almost
everyone out there haden't a story or two about a great old tree,
group of trees, or favorite garden spot that bit the dust for a
road project or parking lot. It might make sense to try for the
long term landscape of hundreds of years in a place like the U.K.,
or Japan where such things have the protection of different cultural
values. I'm not all that sure it does anymore in this country.
The era of Olmstead and his contemporaries that gave us most of
the great public landscapes we enjoy today is gone and mostly forgotten.
More to your point, most home landscapes in this area seem to get
ripped out and replanted every 20 or 30 years, for a variety of reasons.
Yours most respectfully,
Michael Larmer
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