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' + otherArticles[artIndex].content; } if (artML != '') { document.getElementById('otherArticleContentDiv').innerHTML = artML; } } var monthNames = new Array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December"); function getOtherDateWords(dateString) { var dateML = ''; var dateBits = dateString.split('.'); dateML = monthNames[dateBits[1]-1] + ' ' + dateBits[0]; return(dateML); } function sortArticles(theseArticlesArray, byWhich) { var lowestInd = null; var thisOne = null; var sortedArticles = new Array(); var theseArticles = new Array(); theseArticles = theseArticlesArray; var sortedList = new Array(); sortedList = theseArticlesArray; for (var i=0;i 2) { lastItems = sortArticles(lastItems, byWhich); } for (var i=0;iIn an era of disappearing nature, their findings are disturbing. The complexities of plant and animal life and their multiple roles in our lives are crucial in learning to classify and compare in early childhood - differentiating models of the neighborhood\'s SUVs just isn\'t the same thing. Watching animals on TV is perhaps better than nothing, but there is no substitute for real-world experience in a child\'s conceptual and emotional exploration of what life is and what it means.

Caring for creatures or plants is often the child\'s first experience in the feelings and practicalities of caring for another, as well as in responsibility. Animals provide lessons in distinguishing the self from others, and in their dealings with the "other" - the similarities and differences - children learn empathy as well as a healthy regard for dangers. These and other experiences help form conceptual and moral thinking of an appropriate complexity (for example, an animal can be both lovable and dangerous), and a grounded sense of reality.Such experiences arc increasingly rare. Even the living lessons called common sense embodied in language expressions that use animal and natural metaphors are disappearing or have lost their experiential references. Fortunately, some authors here find hope in programs that involve children, and especially adolescents, in the natural world, from outings to engaging high school students in protecting a wildlife sanctuary. They encourage parents to actively integrate experiences with nature in their children\'s lives at every stage.

Eventually teenagers and children respond viscerally to wildlife experiences; the call of the wild to the wildness within is still strong. We are, as Shepard often pointed out, genetically the same beings formed by close interaction with nature for millions of years, and share most of our genes with fellow animals. Books like this, edited by two distinguished scientists, help us understand how we can and must find ways to honor these affiliations and deep human needs in our own societies today.'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = ' Community Site Stewardship'; article.authors = 'Ertter,Dr. Barbara'; article.content = '

Reprinted from the August 1998 Sierra Club Yodeler, newspaper of the SF Bay Chapter with generous permission from editor Don Forman. Dr. Ertter, Curator of Western North American Flora at the University and Jepson Herbaria, frequent Yerba Buena Chapter speaker and active Albany Hill site steward, talks about an ideal way to think globally and act locally.

Mt. Diablo BuckwheatWander around the various parks and open spaces of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the odds are increasingly high that you will encounter groups of individuals pulling up plants by the roots and building piles of wilting vegetation. Some plants are clearly "weeds," but many others comprise the showiest displays of "wild" flowers and shrubs, leaving an unsightly swath of bare ground and dying plants in their wake. But before you seek out a ranger and report this apparent vandalism, strike up a conversation. Chances are you have just stumbled across a dedicated band of community site stewards, the front line "army" engaged in protecting the Bay Area\'s unique natural heritage from an onslaught of devastating invaders.

As human residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, we smugly appreciate our good fortune in living in one of the most favorable climates in the world: mild winters, moderate summers, diverse topography, year-round hiking in redwoods and on ridges. It should therefore not come as a surprise to learn that this same diversity of favorable microclimates also fosters a world class diversity of plants and animals, many of which occur nowhere else.

And a diversity which we are still learning about: new plants and animals (mostly insects) are still being discovered in the counties that surround San Francisco Bay.

Even before the hamlet of Yerba Buena covered the vast sand dunes to become San Francisco, or the East Bay flatlands disappeared under residential communities, many of the species that occur here would have qualified as globally rare. Some are now potentially extinct (e.g., the Mount Diablo buckwheat), while others hang on to continued existence by a toehold. Of potentially greater significance to global biodiversity, however, is the incremental bleeding away of the bulk of species that aren\'t in the limelight: individual by individual, population by population. Even more insidious, much of this erosion is occurring in those areas we think are "protected": regional parks, open spaces, wildlife refuges. Already reduced to islands by the loss of surrounding habitat to development, these fragments of the Bay Area\'s natural heritage are under siege.

The prime culprits are organisms that have been brought to the Bay Area by human activities, either by accident or intentionally. Among the most insidious are the ornamental plants that add such vibrant color to Bay Area gardens. Alas, many of these lovely plants from other parts of the world have overstepped their welcome and made themselves at home, often at the expense of our unique natural heritage. This is not always apparent at first, and there are indeed numerous non-indigenous species that (at least thus far) seem to be benign supplements to local biodiversity.

Others, however, earn the epithet of "non-indigenous pest plant" by gradually displacing all other species at a site. What begins as a selection of colorful novelties added to a drab slope (at least to the untrained eye) can easily become a monoculture of iceplant or an impenetrable thicket of broom. And the delightful diversity of indigenous plants, many of which grow nowhere except coastal California, have disappeared from yet one more fragment of their former realm. And with the plants go any mammals, birds, insects, and other forms of life that depend on exactly those plants or the habitat they create.

Playing God?

One might ask, given our relatively dismal track record to date on ecosystem management, "Who are humans to decide which species have a right to be here and which not?" The answer involves ethical components, primarily responsibility and reparation. Humans are responsible for bringing non-indigenous pest plants to California, which gives us not only the right but the obligation to try to keep them from doing harm to that which was already here, especially that which occurs nowhere else.

The reasons for the lopsided advantage held by non-indigenous pest plants are complex. In general, these same plants were harmonious members of their original communities, part of a complex web of interactions with other species in that area. However, the various pathogens and predators that kept them in check in their homelands have been left behind, allowing a population explosion out of balance with their new surroundings.

Control efforts often accordingly include a biocontrol component: the deliberate searching out and introduction of pathogens and predators that can bring the pest plant back into balance. This, however, is an expensive and tricky business, with prolonged testing necessary to determine if the potential biocontrol agent is specific to the targeted pest plant, or if it will also attack indigenous or agricultural plants. Herbicides, although often an essential part of the "integrated pest management" toolbox, are also potentially hazardous, frequently mis- and over-used, and accordingly controversial.

On the other hand, the development of community site stewardship projects have multiple benefits beyond the control of plant invaders. Most often arising as community-based grass-roots efforts, individuals who have become aware of the threat posed by non-indigenous pest plants band together to protect their favorite piece of local "wild." A synergy develops as these grass-roots efforts share information and coordinate efforts, either informally in "stewardship fairs" or within the framework offered by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, California Exotic Pest Plant Council, and other organizations.

A Sense of Place

Mules EarsCommunity site stewardship has the further benefit of fostering a strong "sense of place" that is an essential component of any sustainable relationship with the planet we call home, even beyond the initial attachment that causes one to take action in the first place. This is because a major challenge in site stewardship is that the best methods must be determined for each site; there are no pre-existing "owners\' manuals" telling us what to do and when. The goal is to figure out what actions will do the most to control the targeted pest plants with the least effort, while simultaneously benefiting (or at least minimally impacting) the indigenous plants, birds, insects, and other members of the biotic community. The primary sources of the necessary information are an understanding of the species present, attention to the cycles of the seasons, and a willingness to learn from the results of previous actions. There is the feeling of letting the sites speak to us directly, telling us what they need from us in order to heal.

In contrast to "restoration," which conjures up images of planting native trees and wildflowers on ecologically degraded sites, stewardship efforts are usually directed toward giving what is at a site the best chance possible to remain at that site, "tipping the balance" back to the indigenous species. "Tipping the balance" means that a targeted pest plant does not need to be eradicated in a single season. What matters is that each year the pest plants are worse off than they were the year before, and that the indigenous species have an improved chance of survival.

The longer view is also essential to counteract any negative reaction to the immediate results of site stewardship activities: piles of wilting greenery, devastated floral displays, swaths of disturbed ground. It is when one returns year after year that the rewards are evident: trilliums and ferns covering the forest floor where ivy had reigned, half-smothered trees filling the gaps with new foliage. Just as it is incrementally, too often imperceptibly, that we lose ground, so also must it be incrementally that we gain it back.

Fighting the Urge

The urge is nevertheless strong to speed up the process, and to seek fulfillment in planting rather than simply uprooting. This is particularly justified for those plants that have nearly disappeared from the site, such that the odds of persisting unaided are stacked high against them. However, it is distinctly possible, given the unique attributes of each site, that the lineages of plants that have persisted at one site for uncounted generations have become slightly different from lineages from other sites, even within the Bay Area. As a result, a preference for "native to site" involves not only aesthetic and philosophical aspects, but also takes into consideration the increased likelihood that plants from a lineage that is already growing at a site are genetically fine-tuned for surviving and persisting indefinitely at that site. In line with the focus on preserving what is already present, the preferred strategy is therefore to propagate from the remaining plants, with the offspring planted back to the same site in areas from which pest plants have been removed.

Community site stewardship projects furthermore give individuals an opportunity to make a difference, to "act locally," in a way that bridges the human and natural communities. And this opportunity is accessible to everyone, independent of ethnic, economic, or educational background. An immense potential accordingly exists for community site stewardship projects to serve as the springboard for rebuilding community across boundaries, as eloquently expressed by Gary Snyder in The Discovery of Turtle Island: "We are all indigenous to this planet, this mosaic of wild gardens we are being called by nature and history to reinhabit in good spirit. Part of that responsibility is to choose a place. To restore the land one must live and work in a place. To work in a place is to work with others. People who work together in a place become a community, and a community, in time, grows a culture. To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture."

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = ' Contaminating the Gene Pool'; article.authors = 'Sigg,Jake'; article.content = '

Monkey FlowersI would like to address the home gardener from a broader perspective, where I see the main issue. CalTrans and environmental consultants have all sorts of mitigation and revegetation going on. I think particularly of something in my back yard, San Bruno Mountain. Congress passed an amendment in 1982 to the Endangered Species Act that created habitat conservation plans (HCPs), and the first such was here. From the beginning it was compromised. Environmental consultants or subcontractors were hired, but the genetic stock that was used there for restoration was not appropriate for San Bruno Mountain. For example, they scattered seed of a red flowering form of bush monkeyflower, Mimulus aurantiacus, from southern California in a misguided attempt.

And now those genes are passing into the wild population of northern Californian Mimulus aurantiacus, and you\'re getting all sorts of strange intermediate forms. Nobody knows what is going to be the long-term effects of this gene flow into the wild population, but since we don\'t know, we shouldn\'t be doing it. We shouldn\'t be doing it, period. It\'s genetic pollution, and that is the sort of thing which I am concerned about.

Now, this is a roundabout way of getting to the home gardener, which is a lesser concern to me. A home gardener, if he puts a bush monkeyflower from southern California into his home garden on the slopes of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, and they pass into the wild population of bush monkeyflower, may not be so serious for the simple reason that in time whatever genetic pollution there is will probably die out. But on San Bruno Mountain, where you\'ve got massive seed sowing you\'ve got genetic swamping, you\'ve got all these foreign genes that are going to overwhelm the native population.

Another example: There\'s been a lot of seed sowing of California poppies, and a lot of them probably come from those gorgeous great big, deep orange forms from Antelope Valley down in southern California. They\'re genetically different from what we have up here, and especially as you get towards the ocean you get smaller and yellower flowers, maybe not quite as showy, but they\'re distinct. So when people sow poppy seeds all over the place, as they have been for many years, the gene pool is contaminated, and we don\'t know whether it\'s good or bad or what the consequences are. All we know is that it\'s happening.

Human beings live their lives on very short time scales. Nature thinks in geological ages. The Earth has been through all sorts of climatic changes, where you have periods of several hundred years of drought, of warming, of cooling, of this, that, and the other thing. The genes for all the native plants have been sorted out over a very, very long time scale, and they\'re very finely tuned to their environment. \'When we introduce exotic genes - exotic meaning not of this place - it could be a very short distance away. It could be like, instead of plants from San Francisco, you plant plants from Napa County or Monterey, or even the East Bay for that matter-which may do very well in the short term, but in the long term nobody knows what effect they\'re going to have. They may weaken or even cause the extinction of a particular species.

This has a lot of practical effects. For example, the Forest Service is looking now for strains of sugar pine that are resistant to white pine blister rust. If they plant thousands of acres of those trees, which would be grown from seed that is selected from resistant trees, we don\'t know what other genes those trees might have. They might succumb to long-period droughts. They might succumb to freezing temperatures or warming or, you know, there\'s just a zillion factors that Nature is concerned about that human beings don\'t have a clue about. Does that make sense?

It\'s this factor that weighs on my mind. I don\'t want to appear overly precious in terms of the home gardener. That\'s of much less importance, and it\'s just that I would like, wherever possible, to get people thinking in terms of preserving the genetic integrity of the local landscape. It requires people to care and to know, and we are living in the midst of an environmentally illiterate society. As long as we are living in that society, then we\'re going to have these very bad decisions because that\'s where the power is.

One more example of potential genetic pollution would be in the Presidio of San Francisco, where the Army had planted cultivars of Ceanothus griseus from the Monterey area, the ground-hugging ones, \'Yankee Point\' and \'Hurricane Point.\' The Army planted some of these cultivars along Lincoln Boulevard in the Presidio, and Ceanothus griseus is closely related to the native Ceanothus thyrsillorus, the prostrate form of that, which occurs in the Presidio. And as of today, any genetic damage is not apparent. The reason for that is that ceanothus is a fire-dependent species and does not regenerate from seed except in the presence of fire or some other disturbance.

So there is no apparent damage done by these plantings, which have been there for several decades. Now, if there ever is a fire or a bulldozing or some kind of disturbance, then I think all of a sudden we re going to find a lot of intermediate seedlings between the indigenous C thysiflorus and these C. griseus hybrids or cultivars. So this is a time capsule. This is not going to happen for X many years in the future. It\'s not apparent right now.

It would be good if people in their home gardens would think in these terms if they live near a natural area. Even in San Francisco we have quite a few natural areas around. They re pocket sized, and they all require a lot of management, but they are still there, and we\'ve still got several hundred species of native plants. It would be good if people were aware of the fact that they ought to be augmenting the indigenous population, which is very, very small and beleaguered. If you plant another form of the same species, not only might those genes pass into the wild, which may or may not be much of a concern but it might be that the native wildlife don\'t find your plant particularly inviting, palatable.

I\'d keep preaching the doctrine, and people would say, "\'Well, where can I get these plants? and I\'d say, "You can\'t." Well, obviously it was a problem. So that\'s why we started our chapter (CNPS) plant sale, and from the get-go we have always offered only locally collected native plants. We don\'t offer any other kind for sale. So they can get them from us at our annual sale in November. There are a number of problems that we haven\'t ironed out yet. This is not an ideal way to do business, but it\'s a start; you\'ve got to create the awareness. We hope that the idea will grow and people will become more sensitized to this issue.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Ecotherapy'; article.authors = 'Gilliam,Harold'; article.content = 'Esalen Coast

We were on a broad shelf above the Pacific, mid-way down the Big Sur coast, looking for something lost ... lost long ago by our ancestors when they moved from the woods and fields into cities. They gained the advantages of urban life but lost their roots in the Earth beneath them and their relation to the stars above them. That loss may be partly responsible for the craziness of our times, for the proliferation of anxieties, for the ongoing destruction of the planet\'s life-sustaining processes.

Two dozen environmentalists and psychologists met last month at the Esalen Institute, called together by Berkeley author Theodore Roszak, who in his seminal 1992 book, The Voice of the Earth, suggested the need for a new profession to begin the integration of psychology and environmentalism. He called it "ecopsychology," a formidable academic term-but perhaps the only one yet available - for the potential rediscovery of the lost wisdom about how to relate to the Earth.

For five days we exchanged thoughts on Roszak\'s thesis that "healing people and healing the planet are part of the same enterprise." There was no disagreement that the planet is in deep trouble, that its human-inflicted wounds - deforestation, poisoned air and water, ozone-layer depletion, soil loss, and extermination of plant and animal species - all contribute to a pervasive feeling that the times are out of joint, that we may be in the grip of a global psychosis.

At least two members of the group could not be numbered among the "we" who have lost roots in the Earth. They were Indians, Native Americans, whose Earth-centered cultures offer something of value to the urban-industrial societies - not a model, for we cannot become hunters and gatherers, but a more sane and salubrious view about how to make our accommodation to the needs of the planet. One of the Indians in the group was Jeanette Armstrong, of the Okanagan people of British Columbia. She jolted us by her reaction to the opening of the conference, when we had followed the usual custom of going around the circle and briefly identifying ourselves.

"Listening to those identifications," she said, "confirmed that what I had heard and feared about whites was true. Every introduction was about yourself, not about your community. You seem to have no community connections. If that\'s true, I\'m sorry for you.

"In our culture, we identify ourselves in relation to our group. We don\'t know who we are except in relation to our family, our community, and the land that is our life. We don\'t know ourselves unless we know how nature works. Our language reflects our knowledge of the birds and flowers and trees. I identify with my people and with the plants ... and I\'m that river, too. Our first law is the law of the natural world that gave us life. We cannot do anything that injures the natural world; we would be injuring ourselves.

"You can\'t imagine the pain your society creates by breaking up our connections to our land and our community. Grand Coulee Dam flooded the land of our ancestors, and we were \'relocated.\' Our children were taken away to attend residential schools and they returned without any sense of community. They didn\'t know how to relate to each other and to plants and animals in a loving way.

"Your disconnection with your community ruins ours. I\'m happy to be here with you, but mostly I feel grief for you and with you. I\'m afraid for the world."

When Armstrong had finished speaking, there was an extended silence as we listened to the sounds of the surf below the cliff. I reflected on the difficulty of understanding cultures that have far different values than our own. In our dominant tradition, nature has always been first an antagonist to be conquered, then a commodity to be used for our convenience and comfort. Is it possible, I wondered, to make a decisive shift in that view, to affirm the rights of nature, todevelop a psychology that redefines the individual as a member of the community of life on Earth?

John Seed, an Australian environmentalist, inducted us into what he called a Council of All Beings. He asked us to make masks that we were to decorate to indicate some plant, animal, or natural feature - and then to wear the masks and speak from the point of view of that being. Someone masked as Ocean spoke of the pollutants that humans were pouring into the sea. Rhinoceros deplored the slaughter of his kind by humans for the supposed aphrodisiac effect of the horn. Redwood related the killing of his parents for lumber but expressed thanks to the humans who had protected him in a park. It occurred to me that the exercise might well be emulated in classrooms as an ecological game.

Like the Native Americans in the group, an African American said he could not identify with the European American view of the environment. He was Carl Anthony, president of Earth Island Institute. "The black experience," he said, "is very different.

"We didn\'t land on Plymouth Rock. As Malcolm X said, Plymouth Rock landed on us. Blacks have had a very painful relation to the land, and our experience is not part of the traditional narrative of American history. We feel left out. To the historians we have been invisible."

Anthony told the group he was deeply concerned with the urban habitat, where it is necessary to consider environmental problems in relation to race, poverty, and injustice.

Another member of the group, James Human, the eminent Jungian analyst, coauthor of We\'ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - and the World\'s Getting Worse, said that the aesthetic experience, the love of beauty, particularly the beauty of nature, is a vital human need ignored by mainstream psychology. Also ignored, he said, is the fact that humans, as Aristotle wrote, are by nature political. Traditional psychotherapy, confined to the inner life, neglects the citizenship dimension, the need for participation in the human and natural communities as an element of mental health. For many people the best therapy may involve quiet meditation under a tree or by the ocean or in the wilderness.

Chellis Glendinning, a New Mexico psychologist and author, began by saying: "My name is Chellis, and I\'m in recovery from Western civilization" (which is also the title of her forthcoming book). She said industrial culture needs to recover from the trauma of being separated from our roots in the natural world.

One response to that traumatic separation, she said, has been addiction: dependence not only on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs but on prestige, wealth, and power struggles. We also try to find relief through over-consumption - for example, by shopping, Glendinning said. But it doesn\'t work: "Recovery involves restoring our sense of belonging, not only to a human community but to the natural world around us."

At the end of the conference, walking back over a footbridge where a creek cascaded under the redwoods, strolling through the reverberating green-energy field of the Esalen gardens as if I were walking through a van Gogh painting, I reflected that although we had not found in five days the talismanic wisdom that the dominant Western tradition lost centuries ago, we had heard some hints about how to find It, some clues to entirely new directions for psychologists and environmentalists.

It seemed evident that we cannot repair the damage we are doing to the Earth without rediscovering the psyche\'s need for an intimate relation to the elemental processes that sustain life on this planet. From the edge of the ancient sea-carved terrace above the cliffs I could look down the Big Sur coast for miles and watch the white explosions where the Pacific was meeting the edge of the continent in a wild, prolific encounter.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Oxalis'; article.authors = 'Sigg,Jake'; article.content = '

OxalisTo find an illustration of the function of natural controls on an organism, one needs look no further than yellow oxalis (aka sour grass or Cape sorrel, Oxalis pes-caprae), a scourge of the California coast. It is a rare and endangered plant in its South African home range; native fowl eat the foliage, a mammal digs the bulbs, and parasites infest bulbs. Freed from these energy-suckers, its spread along the California coast is untrammeled.

My purpose in writing this article is:
(a) to elicit help in determining how yellow oxalis disperses
(b) to heighten awareness of its surreptitious spread, and
(c) to suggest removal techniques and potential problems with those techniques.

People are incredulous to learn that viable seed from this plant has never been reported in California. After absorbing this information, their exasperated question follows: "But HOW does it do it, HOW does it get around?" Oxalis\' abundant production of bulb offsets and lateral runners partially accounts for but doesn\'t fully explain its alarming spread - how it travels so fast, how it gets across the road or 100 yards up the hill or into a second-floor flowerbox. Contaminated soil may account for some occurrences, like the window-box, but that can\'t explain all the populations, especially in wildlands. Perhaps I should borrow an idea from scientist Joe Balciunas, who offered a $100 reward for anyone finding fertile seed of Cape ivy (Delairea odorata) in California for his biocontrol research project on that plant. It worked for Cape ivy; viable seed was found and Joe is $100 poorer. I will make an identical offer to anyone who produces viable seed or verifiable seedling of yellow oxalis. Don\'t expect to snag some easy money here - that\'s my challenge.
(Jake Sigg, 338 Ortega Street, SF 94122; 415-731-3028 - jakesigg@earthlink.net)

The latest version of the California Exotic Pest Plant Council (CalEPPC) weed lists, published in 1999, treated yellow oxalis as needing more information. Up to then it had been considered a weed of disturbed areas (a relative term - is there any part of low-elevation California that is not disturbed?). At that time oxalis began rising on my worry list and in the last three years I have become panic-stricken as I see it proliferating across landscapes. In heavy soils it multiplies rapidly; in sand it explodes. In a remnant native plant community occupying a stabilized sand dune near my house in western San Francisco I watched a small semi-circular infestation with an approximate radius of 20 feet spread seemingly exponentially in less than ten years to dominate the whole ten-acre natural area, and it is now on its way to becoming a monoculture. I wasn\'t watching its progress that closely because I was too preoccupied with other concerns, but it surely did not spread entirely by lateral runners. It must have leap-frogged - I wish I had time-lapse photos. Now it may not be possible to save the site\'s biological community.

I don\'t know how or when it came to California. Bailey\'s 1930 The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture listed it (as O. cernua), so it was probably in the horticultural trade at that time. It is not listed in the wild in Jepson\'s 1925 Manual of the Flowering Plants of California. The first mention of it as a weed that I know of was as O. cernua in the 1951 Weeds of California by Robbins, Bellue, and Ball. They reported it in orchards in the San Francisco Bay Area and southern California. It may have been more widespread than that, and it may have been in cultivated sites before 1925. It has been in the Mediterranean area since the 18th century and it doesn\'t produce seed there either.

Oxalis rootIt certainly does like disturbance.* However, it no longer requires active soil disturbance to become established and it is an increasingly aggressive invader of native plant communities. Once established in a grassland, dune, or even shrubland, its advance is inexorable and without human intervention the outcome is inevitable: eventual displacement of the invaded community. Although it is active only during the brief rainy season, populations nevertheless rapidly expand, displacing plants that are photosynthetically active year-round. Free of the need to produce extra energy to support wildlife, the robust photosynthetic engine pumps out enormous quantities of energy to produce (about February or early March) prodigious bulb offsets and lateral runners in all directions to invade surrounding areas and to muscle out even plants that are much larger than itself. The lateral runners travel several inches at a time; they are peculiar fat, translucent organs resembling icicles, with emergent slender white shoots at the tips. They insert themselves into the middle of an already-crowded clump of healthy natives, even into the tight center of a vigorous bunchgrass or rush, from where they steadily burgeon, to the detriment of the larger plant. Among low-growing plants oxalis directly competes for space and light in addition to its root competition. Its roots compete even with native shrubs such as coffeeberry or coyote bush. Whether this direct competition can weaken or eventually kill a shrub is not established, but it is certain that it will prevent a new generation of that or any other plant at the site. Thus, long-term prognosis is for a monoculture of oxalis. No matter which community is invaded, year-by-year the oxalis becomes stronger and the other plants become weaker. It even out-competes many aggressive weeds. It favors the same habitats as its fellow South African, Ehrharta erecta (see CalEPPC Newsletter, Summer/Fall 1996 [available in Strybing Library]). It will be interesting to see which of these two bullies predominates on a given site; ehrharta is the only plant I know that can prevent oxalis from becoming a monoculture (with the exception of Cape ivy, which on a favorable moist or shady site can smother both oxalis and ehrharta).

Eradication is difficult and time-consuming because of that bulb. A small infestation in a discrete area is a feasible project, but for large tracts spraying may be the only option**, although a judgment call may arise if the infestation is at an advanced stage and the oxalis is so intermixed with the natives that killing it may entail killing the native - a difficult choice. In that kind of situation, some people reason that they are going to lose the community anyway and eradicating the weed will allow them to re-establish the natives. I was able to manually rid it from my garden, which contained many hundreds of oxalis, by persisting in removal of the above-bulb parts for four or five years. Repeated timely removal of top-growth will deprive the bulb of its stored energy. Optimum time for this is winter or early spring just before it starts producing offsets. Placing fingers beneath the crown and pulling gently but steadily (two hands better) will frequently get the whole taproot, especially when it\'s growing in sand. The bulb will probably remain and still have some stored energy to produce more top-growth. A repetition of the preceding operation during the same season will either kill the plant or draw down its energy so severely that one more pull usually effects kill, providing it is well-timed and does not allow time for bulb to recharge. There is need for monitoring for an additional two years to make certain, as I have sometimes found a single small leaf hiding among other plants, slowly building up its bulb\'s strength for a comeback.

I hope this article will elicit interest in this pernicious weed and - who knows - perhaps generate a satisfactory explanation for its spread.

FOOTNOTES:
* An amusing side note is provided by a weed brochure produced in the Bay Area that contained otherwise good information; it recommended getting rid of oxalis by rototilling, a sure-fire way of quadrupling its numbers overnight! (Please, please‹don\'t throw me in that briar patch!)

** I don\'t know of definitive information on effectiveness of herbicides on oxalis bulbs. Anecdotal information I received says that 2% glyphosate is effective providing you have a good surfactant; oxalis leaves tend to shed water. I have not verified this information. A further consideration is if the infestation is in grasslands with few or no native dicots present, triclopyr may be a better choice, as it is designed to kill dicots but not monocots.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Restoring California\'s Native Grasses'; article.authors = 'Elstein,David'; article.content = '

Bunchgrass and Wildflowers California\'s grasslands were once vegetated by native perennial grasses. But during the last 200 years, exotic annual grasses from Europe started taking over, and now only 2% of the state\'s grasslands are vegetated by native perennial grasses.

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is working with university researchers and environmental groups to study how revegetation affects soil and water quality, invasive weeds, and availability of grazing forage. Plant physiologist Stephen M. Griffith, of the Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit in Corvallis, Oregon, is leading ARS\'s efforts in this research.

Studying three grass fields 30 miles west of Sacramento, Griffith hopes to develop a better understanding of how well revegetation efforts work. One field contains annual grasses, one is a newly restored field of native grasses, and the third has contained native grasses for ten years. "There are many advantages of the native grasses, whether as forage for animals or as habitat for wildlife," says Griffith.

Unlike annual grasses, perennial grasses turn green faster, stay green longer, and produce more biomass. This equates to more protein and higher value forage for both wildlife and livestock. The site that contained annual grass had significantly fewer tons per acre of aboveground plant biomass accumulation than the two plots that were restored to native grasses.

Native grasses integrate better with other plants. That diversity of plants attracts wildlife not found in annual grasses. "We\'ve noticed a significant change in biodiversity in the four years that ARS has used my farm for research," says California farmer John Anderson. Furthermore, native grasses improve soil and limit erosion.

There are about 300 species of native grasses, which began to get displaced when Spaniards settled in California in the mid- 1500s, bringing livestock and new land practices. Annual grasses took over in the 1800s, possibly because of overgrazing.

ARS is working with Audubon California on restoration projects on farms and ranches. It is difficult to get perennials established because annuals outcompete them. "We\'re looking at various methods, such as using controlled fires, applying herbicides, and determining what species grow best in which areas of California," Griffith says.

He does say that once perennials are established, their deep roots should help them get rid of annual grasses. And ranchers now know the importance of not overgrazing, so there likely won\'t be a repeat of what happened in the 1800s.

One problem is that native grass seed is very expensive. It may cost $40 a pound, while turfgrass seed is about 50 cents a pound. Griffith hopes that showing the positive effects of native grasslands will influence supply and demand and make native grass more affordable.

Collaborators elsewhere are studying whether native grasses have value as forage; which plants-besides grasses-make up a healthy grassland; what kinds of wildlife appear after native grasses are reintroduced; and whether GIS analysis can determine biomass of grasslands.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Serpentine Grassland Restoration'; article.authors = 'Weiss Ph.D.,Stuart B.'; article.content = '

The serpentine grasslands at Edgewood are widely recognized as the outstanding feature of the Park and Preserve. Unfortunately, all is not well in the serpentine grassland. The flagship animal species, the Bay checkerspot butterfly, has rapidly declined from several thousand individuals in 1997 to near extinction as of Spring 2002. Qualitative observations pinpointed a major change in the habitat: an extensive non-native grass invasion, primarily by Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), had eliminated many acres of Dwarf plantain (Plantago erecta), the primary food plant of the butterfly. The grass invasion was enhanced by record El Niño rains in 1997 and 1998.

In Fall 2000, San Mateo County obtained a $70,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to inventory current conditions, and to begin restoration experiments. The grant is being administered through the San Mateo County Parks Foundation.

The inventory had two components: plant cover transects with several hundred quarter-square meter quadrats in which all species were recorded, and aerial photography. The plant quadrats showed that Lolium multiflorum was the single most abundant species in the main 33 acre block of serpentine, with about 30% cover. Plantago was third with about 6%. The distribution of Lolium and Plantago were negatively correlated, and showed 3 interrelated patterns: 1) Lolium was most abundant on deeper soils, 2) Lolium was more abundant east of I-280 than west, and 3) East of the freeway, Lolium was more abundant closer to the freeway. Only about 20% of the serpentine grassland had sufficient Plantago to support the butterfly, and much of that tended to be on the shallowest soils (10-20 cm), where plants dry rapidly in the spring. The best remaining habitat was greater than 300-400 meters from the freeway.

Similar, but more intense grass invasions have been noted in the South Bay, where high levels of smog act as slow-release nitrogen fertilizer through a process called “dry deposition.” Various reactive nitrogen compounds in smog are absorbed by plants and soil surfaces. The observations at Edgewood indicate that the nitrogen oxides produced by 100,000 cars/day passing on the freeway are providing sufficient nitrogen inputs through dry deposition to effectively fertilize the grassland and allow for nitrogen-loving grasses to invade otherwise resistant serpentine soils.

Aerial photographs, were extremely useful in mapping the extent of grass invasion across the entire serpentine grassland habitat. Areas of high grass cover showed up strongly, and it was possible to classify the photograph into habitat classes corresponding to grass-dominated, forb-dominated, and largely bare rock and soil.

Restoration Experiments

Several blocks of transects were set up to accommodate restoration experiments. Planned treatments included mowing, goat grazing, and prescribed fire.

The mowing experiment was executed in May 2001, and preliminary results are encouraging. Mowing reduced Lolium cover from about 50% to 15% on average, and increased Plantago cover from 3% to 9%. Individual Plantago plants were much larger and healthier than those growing in control areas, and occupied areas of deeper soils. Overall species diversity in the mow plots increased from ~8 species per quadrat to ~11 species.

In March 2002, a herd of 48 goats was brought on site for 6 days. Four small plots were thoroughly grazed to the ground, and another plot was grazed at half intensity. The results of these experiments will not be known in full until Spring 2003.

Prescribed burns, planned earlier this year, were not executed due to safety concerns.

The butterfly population is at or near extinction in 2002. A comprehensive look at reintroduction options, using individuals from healthy South Bay populations, will be part of the final report in Fall 2002

The project has generated a lot of positive excitement among the Edgewood community, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and local conservationists and scientists. The park staff at all levels have been enthusiastic participants, and further funding for continued experiments and larger-scale restoration is being pursued.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Land Snails of San Bruno Mountain'; article.authors = 'Allshouse,Doug'; article.content = '

The plant diversity on San Bruno Mountain is staggering considering the acreage: 659 species on about 3,000 acres. But in addition to these plants, we have over thirty species of native ants, at least five species of native bumblebees, and many species of native butterflies, snakes, birds, and amphibians. Keeping with this theme, have you ever thought about our native snails? We have three native species that I want to tell you about and how you can identify them.

The only exotic snail is well known to everyone, the European garden snail, Helix aspersa (Muller 1774). It was brought to America to be consumed by homesick Europeans as escargot. This snail is now a serious pest, causing damage to garden plants by climbing stalks and stems to feast on choice flowers, buds, or leaves. They can lay waste to a garden literally overnight. It is easy to identify this snail by several keys. The shell is about as high as it is wide and is speckled. It has a closed umbilicus-no umbilical hole near the opening. When the snail is mobile it carries its shell sideways-its top to the right or left. The snail\'s body is a light brownish-gray and rather large.

Two of our native species belong to the same genus and appear identical at first glance. Since our natives have no common names, we will have to refer to them scientifically. Helminthoglypta arrosa (Binney 1858) has a chestnut-colored shell with a black stripe that runs along the outside. The shell is wider than it is high and the snail itself is almost black. When the snail is mobile it carries its shell topside up. It has an open umbilicus, so there is an umbilical hole near the base of the opening. Its cousin, Helminthoglypta nickliniana (Lea 1838) is identical except that it has a closed umbilicus. Like their European counterpart, both of these snails are herbivores, but unlike the garden snail, they are reducers, happily feeding in the duff and detritus along the ground. Thus they cause no harm to plants.

Our third native snail is a little guy called Haplotrema minimum (Ancey 1888). This species not only feeds in the duff, but also sometimes lives in loose understory. If you are ever pulling Cape ivy (Delairea odorata) under some eucalyptus, chances are you will encounter this snail. Its shell is much wider than it is high and has no markings. It has a wide, open umbilicus and the shell rarely exceeds the size of a nickel. This snail fills one other niche that the other three do not. It is omnivorous, which means that, in addition to consuming plant material, it also eats flesh. When it crosses a snail\'s or slug\'s mucous trail, it has a special mechanism that allows it to tell which direction the other snail or slug is traveling. It can follow that trail and when it catches up, it can insert itself high enough into a snail\'s shell to eat it.

The next time you\'re hiking on a cool, overcast morning, keep your eyes peeled for these neat little creatures. When hiking with a group, one of my favorite pastimes is to scan the trail\'s edge for snail carcasses and collect one of each. Then I stop the hike and tell everyone about our amazing native snails.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = ' San Bruno Mountain Fire, July 2003'; article.authors = 'Allshouse,Doug'; article.content = '

San Bruno Mtn. burnOne man\'s trash is another man\'s treasure. It\'s such a simple thought, yet so confounding in its implications. Mother Nature presented a scientific opportunity for biologists and restoration ecologists when she took over an innocuous six-acre planned burn and turned it into a blazing 72-acre extravaganza on July 8, 2003. In a few action-packed hours, over 40 years of mature chaparral was vaporized in Wax Myrtle Ravine on San Bruno Mountain. Some view it as a blackened, barren landscape devoid of life while others anticipate the splendor of verdant activity that lies ahead.

The contemporary view of fire, with urban/wildland interfaces, creates a bureaucratic response to the prevention, containment, and cleanup of wild fires. The Wax Myrtle Ravine fire was the largest wild fire on the mountain in many years. The response by the California Department of Forestry (CDF) begins by bulldozing firebreaks along or across ridgelines. Ground crews create smaller scratch lines using hand tools to stop or slow the fire and pump engines supply water to douse flames along the edges. Air tankers drop prodigious amounts of retardant and helicopters dump water (saltwater in this case) on hot spots. Each of these activities stresses the soil and the surviving plant life in its own way.

There is a certain beauty in the smell of smoky air, the dust devils, and the feel of the crunchy soil underfoot-soil that has been magically transformed to provide fresh nutrients to grow a new palette of plants from seed banks that may have waited almost half a century to feel sunlight.

fern sproutWithin two weeks of the fire, coffeeberry and bush monkey flower, which had been cut with chainsaws, began to stump sprout within the scratch lines. Within the burn area, these same species showed no signs of life. Their charred skeletons would at least create moisture from fog dripping to the ground. Right in the middle of the hottest fire area, bog rush and sedges were re-sprouting adjacent to and within a seep. In the creek bed-half way down the ravine-a large patch of tule sedge and arroyo willow were unscathed by the flames, coddled by the abundant water surrounding them.

Five weeks after the fire, patches of green appeared. Wild cucumber, poison oak, and morning glory had emerged. It was strange to see the cucumber and morning glory since their siblings elsewhere had long ago gone to seed and were dormant. Spot infestations of poison hemlock, fennel, and nightshade appeared in areas where once-piled eucalyptus slash had burned so hot. The charred poles of eucalyptus began to sprout at their bases. When growth reached 18-24 inches they were treated with herbicide to kill the trees. Along the slopes of the ravine, bracken fern showed rapid growth and bright green flashes of fresh, basal coffeeberry leaves added new color to the landscape, reaffirming the resiliency of nature.

Not all was rosy. On the southeastern portion of the ravine, in an unburned area, the toyon and coast sagebrush looked decidedly burnt. Closer inspection confirmed that retardant from the air tankers had chemically burned the foliage. Heavy equipment-like the bulldozer-forms the backbone of CDF\'s ground force. The one on hand uprooted hundreds of bulbs of soap plant, which were gathered, potted, and will be returned to the area.

Also noticeable were slopes where the ground was more brown than black. These south-facing slopes have soils that are thinner, suggesting the potential for grasslands. By identifying these grassland areas, work can commence to insure successful conversion to butterfly habitat by enhancing native grass species and encouraging butterfly host plants. Cooler north-facing slopes with their deeper soils will revert to scrub communities unless burning occurs on a fairly regular basis.

One slope had previously burned on Labor Day weekend in 2001. Studies by Thomas Reid Associates in the spring of 2002 showed good recovery of existing silver lupines - one of the larval host plants of the mission blue butterfly - and germination of new lupines. Stonecrop, the larval host plant of the San Bruno elfin butterfly, survived the fire nicely. A search for golden violets, the larval host plant of the callippe silverspot butterfly, was done in the winter of 2004.

A January 2004 field trip led by the author and Jake Sigg revealed mostly natives returning to the landscape. Two small infestations of poison hemlock and sheep sorrel were observed and noted. Scattered patches of maidenhair fern were heartening and flooded the hopes of all the hikers to return at a later date. By this time most of the scrub species within the burn area had stump sprouted.

By March it was evident that gorse seedlings were sprouting in humongous numbers, its plutonium-powered seed bank awakened by winter rains. There is much work to be done near the streambeds. Himalayan blackberry is being removed before its primocanes can recover its original territory. Up on the south-facing slopes, life was more hopeful. Golden violets and silver lupines were evident in large numbers. The only discouraging event was the presence of filaree littering the otherwise bare soils.

What lies ahead is a great deal of hard work. Most important is controlling invasive weeds. There are thousands of forbs and grasses to plant to control erosion and a creek bed to restore - we hope - to close to its original glory. We are monitoring many sites to chart the rebirth of the ravine. There are plans to involve the local community with restoration projects to promote site stewardship.

Perhaps I should emphasize that those are our plans. Eventually Mother Nature tips her hand and reveals her plans. Then it\'s back to the drawing board to formulate new strategies as we relearn that our vision always takes second place.

Alphabetical List of Species in Article:

    Plants:
  • arroyo willow - Salix lasiolepis
  • bog rush - Juncus effusus
  • bracken fern - Pteridium aquilinum
  • bush monkey flower - Mimulus aurantiacus
  • California sagebrush - Artemisia californica
  • coffeeberry - Rhamnus californica
  • eucalyptus - Eucalyptus globulus
  • fennel - Foeniculum vulgare
  • filaree - Erodium spp.
  • golden violet - Viola pedunculata
  • gorse - Ulex europaea
  • Himalayan blackberry - Rubus armeniacus (syn. R. discolor)
  • maidenhair fern - Adiantum jordanii
  • morning glory - Calystegia purpurata
  • nightshade - Solanum furcatum
  • poison hemlock - Conium maculatum
  • poison oak - Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • sedges - Carex spp.
  • sheep sorrel - Rumex acetosella
  • silver lupine - Lupinus albifrons
  • soap plant - Chlorogalum pomeridianum
  • stonecrop - Sedum spathulifolium
  • toyon - Heteromeles arbutifolia
  • tule sedge - Scirpus microcarpus
  • wild cucumber, manroot - Marah fabaceus/M. oreganus
    Butterflies:
  • callippe silverspot - Speyeria callippe callippe
  • mission blue - Icaricia icariodes missionensis
  • San Bruno elfin - Callophrys mossii bayensis

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'WALC - Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative'; article.authors = 'Bowman,Kristin'; article.content = '

WALC StudentsA phenomenal group of teachers at Balboa and Downtown Continuation High Schools created a program called the Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative (WALC). They teach students who are significantly underserved from low-income, high-risk neighborhoods. The students, who often have failed in other school programs, are flourishing through WALC, with 90% of the Balboa students going on to college, and 30% into the UC system. A central piece of WALC curriculum involves weekly field trips to McLaren Park. Here the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department\'s Youth Stewardship Program leads WALC in environmental education and habitat restoration activities to foster an understanding of the interconnections of the McLaren Park Watershed.

"I take each faithful step
in mother nature\'s heart
ready to let this world
that changed my life
carry me upstream."

- Marisa Miranda, WALC, Downtown High School

A young woman is thinking of the earth, of hands and knees covered with soil as she sows and counts indigenous scrub and grasses. A nearby park\'s ravines and hillsides welcome freshly planted lupine, willow, and sagebrush. The last of a year-long stream of data that will be used to shed light on fire ecology and native plant species has been collected from a hillside burn area.

A young man is reliving memories of the vista atop exposed roots of an ancient mountain, of first imagining the slow laying down of once great peaks around him. In a desert six hundred miles away, those rocks continue to weather into dust surrounded by the flowering thorns he had so carefully studied.

A teacher is pondering an unforgettable facet of a place she has once again revisited: that puzzling outcropping, that shallow pond inside the oasis, those downed trees strewn about that wetly trickling canyon walled with ferns. In her cabinet at school, last spring\'s bedrock lessons and themes are waiting to be reworked.

Right now any number of students, graduates, and teachers from (WALC) are having such reveries. In WALC, experiences like these are the central, organizing, and driving force of school. Nature is the one model that consistently and effectively teaches both students and teachers what they need to learn. Whether it is how to pick up the pieces of one\'s life after a personal tragedy, or exploring one\'s forgotten cultural roots and untold history; whether it is grasping how pressure and heat operate within a weather system, or simply comprehending the difficult text of numerous books and novels, there is nothing that can be learned more effectively than lessons observed and experienced first-hand in the natural world. When the educational model is the earth, then school is about becoming aware of the whole. Threads connecting history, literature, science, art, technology, and math are explored; students develop not just academically but emotionally, spiritually, personally.

In two inner-city high schools in San Francisco, this small but innovative and comprehensive program has been transforming the educational experiences of at-risk and disadvantaged youth for nearly seven years. If nature is indeed the best teacher, then our students at Balboa High School and Downtown Continuation High School, having struggled with educational and social inequities for years, are the ones who now need and deserve her tutelage most. And if indeed the outcome of our environmental struggles ultimately rests on the empowerment of people who live in communities that bear the severest brunt of environmental degradation, then the earth desperately needs our students to become reacquainted and familiar with her workings. This consciousness, and the shared memories in some of the most beautiful places in the world that inspire genuine affection amongst us, lend a sense of conviction to WALC\'s work, a solemn but joyful awareness of its importance.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = ' What is Native?'; article.authors = 'Hyland,Tim'; article.content = '

Pink flowering currantThe question "What is Native?" is one I have been asked many times during my years growing California native plants. The answer I have given in the past usually went something like this: Any plant that was brought here by humans is exotic, and any plant that occurred here without human intervention is native. One of the problems with such an answer, however, is that it puts humans smack dab in the middle of the picture, and it sets a rather arbitrary time frame by which to decide what is or is not native. Although human beings have indeed had an incredible impact on the planet, it is the relationships between other organisms that lie at the heart of this question. Therefore, I think a better answer would be this: In order for a plant or animal to be considered "native" it must have evolved with the other organisms in the geographic region where it is found. By looking at things on an evolutionary and geological time scale we can begin to make sense of the question of what is native.

Sixty-five million years ago this state was a fairly flat, warm, and wet place. It was inhabited by plants and animals adapted to a tropical climate. Over the course of several geological epochs, California underwent radical changes, becoming cooler and drier and considerably steeper. During this time, plants and animals that relied on warmth and moisture retreated southward, and organisms that thrived in a Mediterranean climate moved in, or evolved from existing populations. During the course of millennia they established relationships and interdependencies that formed the basis for one of the most diverse arrays of life on the planet. One often hears about the incredible diversity of the rainforests, but California is no slouch in that regard; it is home to an astonishing number of plants and animals.

Most of California is bordered by either oceans, deserts, or mountain ranges, all of which present formidable barriers to the movement of plants and most animals. It also possesses both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous forty-eight states, and spans more than a thousand miles of latitude. These factors have combined to produce a vast array of different habitats, each providing its own specific constraints under which evolution may proceed.

None of the many species that make their home in California, however, live in isolation. Each is mixed up in a dance of baffling intricacy and mind-boggling scope. There are, I have been told, over 400 species of gall wasps that rely on the roughly 20 species of oaks found here. These wasps each use a particular part of a particular oak in which to lay their eggs - some choose the young twigs of the valley oak (Quercus lobata), others the leaves of the blue (Quercus douglasii), or coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). Without the oaks these wasps could not complete their life cycle and would rapidly become extinct. These native wasps and native oaks also have connections to hundreds, if not thousands, of other insects, birds, amphibians, mushrooms, plants, and mammals. Each organism is a strand in the web of interdependencies. A native plant or animal, then, is one that is enmeshed in this miraculous web, this dance of life. Not only is it a participant but, by long association with its neighbors, it is one of the architects of the place in which it lives.

In contrast, a plant or animal that evolved somewhere else, and has recently been introduced to a new habitat, has none of these connections with the local community. Not unlike a person who moves to a new town, the plant or animal will develop relationships with the locals, but these do not have the depth and complexity of those that have evolved over the life of the community, be it hundreds or millions of years. The anise swallowtail butterfly and sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), a plant brought here by European immigrants, have developed that sort of "shallow" relationship. This butterfly once fed primarily on a native plant in the carrot family called yampah (Perideridia spp.), common in grasslands all over the state. Because yampah goes dormant in late spring, the butterfly had only one or two broods each year. With the introduction of sweet fennel, however, which actively grows all summer, the swallowtail now produces multiple broods. But what has been a boon to one species of butterfly is the bane of many coastal grasslands as a whole. In its native habitat sweet fennel is a well-behaved member of a complex community that both supports its existence and restricts its spread. In coastal California it is free from the biotic constraints of its homeland and is spreading rapidly, displacing native species that are more restricted in their ecological associations.

On Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of southern California, sweet fennel covers a huge portion of what were once grasslands, forming such dense stands that it has effectively eliminated all other species of plants from the areas where it grows. This is just one example in a laundry list of species that are threatening our wildlands. Here on the central coast along with sweet fennel are English ivy (Hedera helix), French broom (Genista monspessulana), Cape or German ivy (Delairea odorata), Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus), ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis), pampas grass (Cortaderia jubata), and periwinkle (Vinca major), to name a few.

So what does it matter if the members of our many unique communities are displaced by a few well-adapted individuals from other parts of the world - if western bluebirds and purple martins are replaced by European starlings, and the willow thickets that line our streams are covered in blankets of Cape ivy? The arguments for the preservation of ecosystems seem to break down into two groups: those that see such systems as being necessary for the survival of human beings, and those that advocate such actions in the belief of the intrinsic value of all life.

Perhaps the simplest and, to my mind, the most eloquent statement made in defense of biodiversity from the first perspective was written by Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of the environmental movement. He wrote, that the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to never throw anything away. I picture myself working on my car which, no matter how many times I do it, remains a mystery to me. I can see myself in the middle of a driveway surrounded by oddly shaped bits of metal, some of whose functions I understand and others I can only guess at. There have been times when I put everything back together and, wiping the grease from my hands, I look down and see some seemingly insignificant part lying on top of the engine. Sometimes the car runs fine without it, sometimes it won’t make it out of the driveway. I always save those pieces, whether it seems like I need them or not. Species extinction is occurring worldwide at an unprecedented pace; bits and pieces of the mechanisms of ecosystems are being scattered, or removed willy nilly. We don’t yet know how these plants and animals fit into that complex dance - those mechanisms, that are life on this planet - and we are still finding out how heavily we may rely on them.

The second argument for ecosystem preservation is harder to articulate. My sister teaches third grade, and she was bemoaning the fact that she had the hardest time getting her students to pick up trash in the classroom. They would say: "It’s not my trash, I didn’t put it there." My sister would then explain that it wasn’t hers either, but that it was everybody’s room, and they were all in this together. We are all in this together, and we have responsibilities extending beyond ourselves, beyond our children, beyond our own society and species, and into the larger community in which we live.

[Reprinted from The Cypress Cone, CNPS Santa Cruz County Chapter, August 1996]

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Slideshow: India Basin/Hunter\'s View Serpentine Habitat'; article.authors = 'Bors,Margo'; article.content = '

View the Slideshow »

As part of an ongoing effort to preserve an intact serpentine hillside habitat in eastern San Francisco, Margo Bors has created a slideshow highlighting the unique character and potential of this remnant seprentine habitat. So far, the signs are good that ensuing development in this neighborhood will respect this special natural area - but only ongoing interest and public requests can help insure this location remains in its natural state. Contact Margo Bors (mcbors@comcast.net) for more information. The slideshow will open in a new window that will expand to fill a 1024x768 screensize.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Miner\'s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata)'; article.authors = 'Sigg,Jake'; article.content = '
Claytonia perfoliata
click to enlarge

Miner\'s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) is a native annual herb that is common in disturbed, often shady areas. It is a cheerful light green, and it holds its clusters of tiny white flowers above a saucer-like leaf that completely surrounds the supporting stem. All the plant\'s succulent and juicy parts are edible, and were used by native peoples and European settlers for salad. They would put the plants on ant nests, the ants would walk all over them, and the formic acid on ants\' feet—used to establish their trails—provided a slightly vinegary dressing.

The plants have been abundant, at least up until now, and you find them as waifs in vacant lots, waste areas, gardens, roadsides, and parks, providing charm, beauty, and variety to otherwise drab areas. But miner\'s lettuce may be less abundant in the future, as its favored habitats are being usurped by weeds, in particular yellow oxalis (Oxalis pes-caprae) and ehrharta (Ehrharta erecta), an aggressive perennial grass. Both plants are from South Africa and here they lack the natural agents which keep them under control in their native range, whereas the native plants must share their energy with the food chain—an unequal contest. I have been seeing patches of miner\'s lettuce disappearing under the onslaught of these invaders, and it is only a matter of time before this little treasure will disappear entirely, save where human intervention maintains little refuges.

How ironic for such a common, ubiquitous, weedy plant.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'Yarrow (Achillea millefolium var californica): How Yarrow Improved My Life — In Two Different Ways'; article.authors = 'Luk,Hoenie'; article.content = '
Achillea millefolium var californica
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Workshop and field trip participants are sometimes asked how we became interested in studying plants. One day in 2005 while strolling in the park with my two-year-old son, who was just learning to speak, I casually tore off a piece of leaf from a redwood tree, stuffed it into his hand, and tried to teach him to say "redwood." He took the leaf and held it like a trophy for several hours, but I did not expect him to learn the new word on the first try. I was totally surprised when, three days later at a totally different location, he pointed at my feet and uttered "redwood"—and indeed I was stepping on a pile of dried up brown redwood leaves! I was so amused that I repeated the same trick with oak, cypress, pine, giant sequoia, and eucalyptus (a quadrisyllable!). Not only did he effortlessly learn to say their names, he could even identify them by the shapes of the leaves. As my knowledge of plant names quickly approached its limit, I figured I’d better take some classes to learn some more before my son caught up with me. (Note: As I later had the chance to take children on plant walks, I have discovered that almost every child has this botanical talent even at a very young age.)

The true impetus for my interest in native plants, however, is a bit more personal. It started back in the summer of 1987 when, out of nowhere, mysterious "paper cuts" appeared on the knuckle of my thumb. I did not cut my fingers in any way, but my skin would just gash open and bleed slowly for no reason, leaving me painful and itchy at the same time. As the condition developed, I could have five to ten of these cuts over my five fingers, which took two to three weeks to heal. A month or two later, another episode of "paper cuts" outbreak would repeat all over again. Over the next ten years, I saw several doctors, but they could only tell that it was neither infection nor allergy, and, since the hydrocortisone cream they prescribed did not help, the only thing I could do was wrap band-aids around the wounds. It was not until 1998 that I found a Chinese herbalist who could make a cream that, when applied, closed the wounds beautifully within two days. Unfortunately, the cream lost its healing power after two weeks, so I had to see the herbalist for a fresh batch every time a new outbreak occurred, which was not very practical.

In 2006, my mother was offered a pair of tickets to the Green Festival in San Francisco, where her friend was a vendor. As the tickets sold for $15 each, I gladly accepted when my mother gave them to me and told me to find out for her how people were making money under the banner of protecting the environment. The exhibit hall was packed with vendors, one of whom was selling herbal first-aid kits for $40. "Forty bucks for a first-aid kit! Isn’t that expensive?" I exclaimed quietly to my wife. There were three bottles of tinctures (alcohol extracts) and four vials of salves (similar to butter in texture) in the kit, but what caught my attention was a little card that listed many different conditions and the corresponding tincture or salve to treat each one. Mostly out of curiosity, I showed the vendor my "paper cuts" and asked her what remedy she would recommend. After a moment of thought, she told me to try the yarrow salve. I was reluctant to spend $40 on an unproven remedy for a condition that doctors could not solve, but on second thought, the first-aid kit was such a great business idea that I could not resist bringing it back to show my mom. So I bought the kit.

That night, my wife and I, hoping $40 would at least buy us a good laugh, jokingly applied the yarrow salve on parts of our skin that could use some help. But the real funny thing was that, next morning, the itch and the pain on my fingers had stopped. A day later, most of the "paper cuts" had closed and healed. I had actually found a long-lasting solution for the skin condition that had troubled me for twenty years!

Naturally, my mother was ecstatic to hear the news. She was so happy that she decided to learn to grow yarrow in her garden and make yarrow salve for me, which turned out to be not too difficult. All she had to do was to soak the plants in olive oil for a few months, and then mix the oil with a specific proportion of melted beeswax, which solidified on cooling into a butter-like salve.

I became fascinated with yarrow and, after a few Internet searches, learned about its reputation as a blood-stopping, wound-healing herb—hence its genus name Achillea, supposedly to commemorate the famous Greek hero Achilles, who used yarrow to heal the wounds of his soldiers during the Trojan War. If yarrow was capable of healing horrendous wounds inflicted by spears and swords, no wonder it had no trouble healing the "paper cuts" on my fingers.

But this is only one way in which yarrow has improved my life. Beyond yarrow, it was only natural for me to then become fascinated with the other six plants used in the herbal first-aid kits—plantain, arnica, St. John’s wort, elderberry, California poppy, and Oregon grape. What do they look like? Where can I find them? What possibilities do they hold? Furthermore, what other magical plants are out there?

As I spent more time reading field guides to medicinal plants, it soon became clear to me that almost every plant in California has some sort of medicinal use. It is only a matter of whether we have records of such precious knowledge from the indigenous people who utilized the plants but who, unfortunately, had likely long vanished. Thus it made sense to me to simply go ahead to learn all the plants I could possibly find in the wild. It was under this circumstance, exactly one year ago, that I discovered CNPS and began joining its many field trips.

Unlike the healing of my "paper cuts," the satisfaction that comes with knowing the plants which surround me is intangible, but it is equally fulfilling and rewarding to my natural spirit. Who knows what someday I may be able to do with the knowledge about California native plants? But whatever awaits me in the future, I owe much to this wonderful plant called yarrow and to the wonderful people at CNPS who share their knowledge with me. It is true and certainly no exaggeration that "all I know about plants I learned from CNPS.

'; article.date = ''; addArticle(article); //***END ARTICLE ENTRY //***BEGIN ARTICLE ENTRY newArticle(); article.title = 'San Bruno Mountain Fire, June 2008'; article.authors = 'Allshouse,Doug'; article.content = '
Achillea millefolium var californica
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This was a generational event, a pyrotechnic three-ring circus of enormous importance and magnitude. On Sunday evening, June 22, a wildfire that eventually reached five alarms erupted just northwest of the town of Brisbane in Buckeye and Owl Canyons. It will take a few years for this portion of San Bruno Mountain to sort out the effects of the fire and the process will be very educational and probably frustrating as well.

The two adjacent canyons offer different habitats and the fire affected each in a different way. Buckeye Canyon, aptly named for the dense riparian forest that inhabits the ravine, suffered little damage except for the two ridges that define it. The heavily-brushed Owl Canyon, on the other hand, was literally vaporized except for a lightly forested area on its north ridge. California Department of Fire reported 100-foot flame lengths as mature coastal scrub heartily burned. Both canyons burned from bottom to top and the fire jumped the road along the main ridge and headed down the western flank toward South San Francisco. The wildfire consumed about 300 acres.

Grassland fires burn cooler because the leading flame edges move faster and the fuel loads are lighter, so deep-rooted native bunchgrasses generally survive wildfires. It is areas where hot-burning scrub drove flames into the grasslands that are cause for concern. If the grasses were root-killed due to prolonged exposure, they are not coming back.

Even with intensive management we will probably lose those patches to weeds.

This fire was the third wildfire on the mountain since late April. One was extremely small and the other managed to threaten a home in an area prone to near-annual fires in southern Brisbane near the South City border along Old Bayshore Road. Although fire of any magnitude is significant in the mountain\'s wildlands, the Buckeye-Owl fire is the largest event in many decades. Two hundred residents were evacuated but no personal property was damaged.

Fire is an adaptive management tool that, along with natural grazing and browsing, has been missing in promoting healthy grasslands that once covered much of the lower elevations in California. Grasslands are the most productive habitats, providing the greatest range of food and plant diversity. Two of the three species of endangered butterflies, the mission blue and callippe silverspot, use plants that thrive in healthy grasslands. The threats to native grasslands are invasions of non-native grasses and forbs, and succession by native and invasive shrubs. Succession has been claiming almost fourteen acres of grassland per year on the mountain.

Fortunately the fire scrubbed the canyons pretty clean of just about everything. This gives the land a shot of nutrients to recharge the soil and awaken seedbanks that have long been lying dormant. Unfortunately, invasive grasses like wild oats (Avena spp.) and quaking grass (Briza maxima) will come back along with a host of pioneer invasive forbs like Italian thistle (Carduus pycnocephalus) and Australian fireweed (Erichtites spp.).

The real opportunity lies with the removal of large stands of coastal scrub. These shrubs are adapted to fire and those not outright killed by the fire will begin stump sprouting new growth within a month after the fire. If designated plots of scrub were removed by hand, it might be possible to encourage grasslands to return. The fire scorched two callippe silverspot monitoring transects and burned several acres of callippe silverspot and mission blue host plants, California golden violet or johnny-jump-up (Viola pedunculata) and silver lupine (Lupinus albifrons), at the height of callippe flight season. Many callippe were observed flying and mating immediately after the fire. Life went on.

Jake Sigg and Doug Allshouse are planning a series of field trips to Buckeye and Owl Canyons to observe and discuss the progress of habitat recovery.

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