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Re: Re[2]: new subscriber

Nice list of plants, i have a few comments to add tho =)

>Aesculus californica  - 'Obviously' a california native
>         - California Buckeye. Beautiful flowers. Somewhat
>        drought resistant. Seeds make excellent sling-shot ammunition.
>Very easy
>        from seed, which I just happened upon a few miles from my
>house.        
>        Poisonous enough to deterdeer and those Thomomys pocket devils.
>It's    
>        said our aboriginal forebears knew howto prepare the seeds to
>render    
>        them edible.

I heard the native peoples here used to do something similar to the way
you get the tannic acid out of acorns. Also they used to use the ground
up seeds to stupefy fish in the rivers too. I love Aesculus and
hundreds of seeds litter the hills near here (i live not far from san
juan bautista where hundreds of buckeyes grow). So theyre easy enough
to collect like you said. 
Unfortunately the flowers are poisonous to bees (but to me they smell
slightly rosy). Ive also heard if its given some summer water it will
keep its leaves through september.




>Phacelia bolanderii A California native wild flower - easy from seed.

this is a common flower in the former Ft. Ord. When i worked with the
watershed institute at Cal State Monterey Bay, we had to collect the
seed from these. (ver easy, you just grab at the base of the Fiddle
heads (i think thats how the flowers grew) and pulled.

>Cupressus macrocarpa  Our native Monterrey Cypress - quite easy from
>seed. (If  
>        you like little 15 cm tall trees! 8)  )

Very easy to grow from seed. In fact Ft. Ord has hundreds of these
trees all over!. 
to me theyre much prettier when wind blown and sculpted (probably why
they make such easy bonsai). Not to mention how fast they grow!


>Asclepias syriaca   Common milkweed  - My wife tolerates the flowers
>(... "But  
>                     they're not roses!")
>                     And I'm trying butterfly husbandry, too.
Ive seen the native Milkweeds up on Fremont Peak and i must say the
flowers are the most interesting part of the plant. THese plants also
seemed to attract these large black and metallic green wasps


>Umbellularia californica (I've got dozens of these guys)  California
>Bay.
>                A native, beautiful, useful tree. Leaves are a good
>seasoning,  
>                seeds are said to be very tasty when roasted (but I
>haven't     
>                tried it.) I found hundreds of the seeds scattered
>about the    
>                ground last winter near the Pinnacles ( rocky hills
>south of    
>                 here)

i used some of the leaves once to keep fleas at bay! It works! the
leaves (especially the young ones) that i picked were so strong it
surprised me.


>Araucaria araucana - I just like the way Araucarias look

there is an amazing mature specimen of this tree on one of the lawns of
the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey. Unfortunately it has the
habit of dropping spiny dead branchlets 

For me, ive been amazed at a beautiful Phyllostachys i saw in a large
pot in a neighbors yard next to my grandmothers house. It was
beautiful, the culms were at least 15 feet high and it swayed in the
slightest breeze. I think ill have to try and dig some of the bamboo i
have and buy a large pot for it to be planted in, and see if it works
(i do have a smaller pot of the same bamboo but its very small (i let
it get dry and the takk culms it did have died but the rhizome survived
and is sending out small shoots now).







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    "ang sinomang hindi marunong lumingon sa kanyang pinanggalingan ay
hindi                                      makararating sa kanyang
paroroonan"
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