Q and A: Southern Lush

I came across a particularly lovely picture tonight, one worthy of standing by itself in a post.  I was looking to post on another closely related topic, that of how rivers affect their surroundings in terms of soil and plant life, but that's looking like it will be a huge undertaking in terms of the sheer pictures that need to be uploaded.  Instead, since I have been active on this here blog again, and a few questions have started streaming in, tonight we feast upon a picture and try to answer a question.

Q: Since you have been to so many places and lived in quite a few, where would be an ideal place to plant some roots if you had the option?

A: That is a very unfair, difficult question.  If money were no object, I would love to have multiple small places.  One which is already there, up north in Ontario.  One on the high plains, preferably eastern Wyoming or western Nebraska.  One in highland Mexico, in the trans-volcanic belt.  One in western New York or southern Michigan, where I would probably spend most of my time.  One in the coastal South... yes, especially that one. 

If you rephrase the question as "where would you like to live to be able to garden to your heart's content", it would still be tricky, as I have a fondness for northern species of trees, shrubs, and in the flower department, for the gifts of the prairie, but wow, the South has amazing native stuff like evergreen oaks, more azaleas than you can shake a stick at, pines upon pines, moss dripping off of it all, and... magnolias.  Not the hardy, Asian hybrid kind that flower before they leaf out, but the kind that never lose their leaves and flower in full green.  Needless to say, I do have a picture, and a natural one at that, of most of these elements put together:

Oh yes, that is truly lovely.  Sure, it comes with some price tags, notably brutal summers of heat and humidity, destructive storms for a much longer period than up north (including hurricanes), and much less of a thrill regarding the onset of spring, but... I mean look at that!  The tree on the left with the brown undersides to the leaves is a Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora), perhaps the second or third most beautiful tree on the planet.  The tree on the right with the lighter green, almost maple looking leaves is a Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua), a tree that can be found from the tropical cloud forests of Central America to the Ohio Valley and New York City, one of the few trees besides the Red Maple (Acer Rubrum of our past maple sugar posts) and Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) to brilliantly light up the Autumnal southern canopy.  In the center stage below is a Sabal Minor or Dwarf Palmetto, the northernmost naturally occurring species of palm in North America, and in the rear, dripping with that incredible Spanish Moss (Tillandsea Usneoides) is one of those incredible evergreen oaks, the Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana).  Its a veritable natural stand of who's who in the Southern tree world.  When I found this thicket, growing so peacefully off the shores of Albergottie Creek in Beauford, SC, I stared for a good ten minutes, as if it were a holy icon.

Then I had to wonder why these trees, clearly more in love with being nice and dry, were so close to something so decidedly wet like a tidal creek.  Except for the palm, none of these species like to get their feet soaked for a long time.  Then I remembered that even a few inches of elevation change can make all the difference in an otherwise very low landscape such as this.  That's the special thing about river habitats, really, they have a strong influence on their immediate surroundings, but life goes back to something else once you get far and high enough away, as we will see in our upcoming river post.  At the same time, rivers have far more of an effect on us humans; while we love to use them to travel and fence in for aesthetic purposes, we sometimes also learn to give them a wide berth, what with the way flooding and erosion works.  In many places such as this, the "extended river" becomes a vessel of green and wild cutting through an otherwise cultivated and transformed landscape.  So, to be more precise about that question, something in the South near, but not on, a river.  To be honest, the mosquitoes are just a bit much to handle...

Winter 2014, A Final Farewell

Spring looks to be finally upon the continent, even towards more northerly reaches.  While the alpine heights of the mountains and the more distant north will not experience the hints of a growing season until June, more temperate lands have started to feel release from what has truly been a difficult winter.  Were it not for the snow many of us (except, sadly, on good portions of the Great Plains) had, the landscape would look like a disaster area.  Here in Southeastern Michigan we experienced the grip of the sort of cold best reserved for Northern Ontario, and our friends on the other side of Lake Michigan were even worse off.  In contrast, much of the far west experienced relative warmth... except for one place.

Thanks to a special friend for taking this shot for me. 

This would be in Washington, Utah, a place otherwise noted for being at the edge of the Mojave Desert and thus prone to mild winter days in the lower fifties and chilly nights hovering around half of that value.  Now and then snow can fall in this land, as it did in record amounts back in 2008, but in general the thaw comes around quickly and winter rains, rather than fluff, prepares the red land for a floral display of utmost brilliance when spring sunshine warms the scenery.  Things are warm again there now, but back in December they almost got as cold as they did back here in Michigan; some days did not go above freezing.  Nearby Zion National Park recorded sub-zero temperatures.  Most of the native flora handled this somewhat well, but some had a rough time, including the palms seen above.

Those are crossed California Fan Palms (Washingtonia Filifera), a palm otherwise noted for its incredible cold tolerance.  While they do not grow native in this particular part of the Mojave, they can be found less than a hundred miles away in an isolated grove in northern Clark county, Nevada, and in general they can handle the climate anywhere lower than 3,500 feet around there pretty well.  They can handle periodic freezes and snow just fine, with the storms of 2008 barely phasing them.  Unfortunately, that little corner of Utah got just a little too cold for comfort, for too long.  Many palms and tender plants bit the dust in what was well below any sort of normal occurrence.  In the meantime, nearby coastal California never got even close to that cold, nor did it see any sort of rejuvenating precipitation, snow or otherwise.  This winter has simply been out of control for everybody, which is not a good sign when taken in conjunction with temperature and precipitation swings wild in the other direction even just last year (and especially 2012).  I'm not going to go on a tirade about Climate Change, but I am saying to keep an open-mind; this is not proof that things are going screwy up there in the sky, and it is not "how winters used to be when I was a kid" either.  My parents at least claimed there were thaws in January and March was actually March and not what January should average out at.  Out there in extreme Southwestern Utah, they have also been growing palms for quite a while too, meaning that this was extreme and not so much a return to "how things used to be".  I encourage them to try again with the palms, or at least start planting Joshua Trees (Yucca Brevifolia) a bit more; both can take the heat, both can tolerate the cold, both can definitely shrug off the dry.

Oh, and for a little more information on the picture, we have two western classics out there, one more Plains and Inter-mountain, Sinclair Oil (I know, ironic in a post about winter not being normal), and one more Pacific western, In-N-Out Burger, which in all bust the most impossible climates puts a signature pair of crossed Fan Palms (usually California variety) outside of their restaurants.  Hopefully they try again, or wait to see if the things survived; our North American palms are exceptionally hardy.  

Wednesday Filler: A Western Intruder

Rising above some hidden courtyard, along with some disturbingly modern architecture, is a Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia Robusta).  In the foreground grows the native and rugged Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto). 

In Southern California and parts of Arizona and southern Texas, Mexican Fan Palms get planted so much that one would think them native to such parts of the world (they are actually from Sonora and both states on the Baja peninsula).  They feature prominently in street plantings, and often form an urban backdrop in Los Angeles and San Diego, even more so to the extent than how the Cabbage Palm is used in Charleston.  With two native palm choices that nearly grow like weeds already in Charleston, I was amazed to find one at all, but snickered a little bit when I saw how hidden away it was.  Next post, the promised look at the green spaces of Charleston.

The Palms of Charleston

In the last post we pondered the question as to how well palms were received for ornamental purposes in past eras, at least in the United States.  As noted, very few depictions of gardens, cityscapes, landscapes, or even individual botanical subjects include palms as a regular feature, even while we also know that the settlers of the Carolinas and Georgia were certainly familiar with their abundance in the wilds around their settlements.  The islands from the Charleston area southward do indeed have the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) growing in abundance among the pines, magnolias, myrtles, and all other sorts of wonderful Southern plants.  The Dwarf Cabbage (Sabal Minor) also grows here and north halfway up the coastal areas of North Carolina (in the west well inland to extreme southeastern Oklahoma).  Crepe Myrtles and various broadleaved evergreens are easily grown here, and considering what I had thus far seen of the new subtropical crazed South, I was expecting to see a few streets nicely lined with Cabbages, such as in the scene below:

Yes, it was humid, hence the blur.  Yes, like much of the eastern United States and Canada, everyone here seemed to be glued to a cell-phone, at least in the trendier shopping areas and business-dominated streets.

 But while there was some formality to the plantings as in the standard lined street above,the older sections of town seemed to focus slightly less on formal layouts than in fitting in vegetation wherever possible. 

That's a story for another post, but the theme of the finding is important in understanding how palms are simply everywhere here, almost like weeds.  Understand, Charleston is very groomed and formal.  Yes, some of the brickwork and paint could use some work, but the overall effect is more one of proudly displaying an aged antique.  Most of the people here have public dress which belies a concern for respectability and a sense of decorum.  Manners are refined even between people in rush hour traffic.  Once you get away from the hustle and bustle of the urban core, the cell-phones even disappear.  The backstreets have a quiet, reflective pace.  Again, this is owed another post, so back to the palms, but you get the idea.

They are allowed to grow to their own designs.  It seems wherever there is a little bit of room for soil and roots they are planted, and not necessarily to the exclusion of other trees and shrubs.  They do range naturally here, and probably spring up just as often wild as cultivated.

If this were so many other cities, the little one at the lower left would be groomed right out of existence!

But let's face it, the tourists like them, the locals have long since made them their floral emblem, and they are low demand trees.  I still question how long they have been this popular, but in some places where the overall formal lines do return, it is obvious that the Cabbage Palm has long since been a favorite of Charleston, the planned city with crooked edges. 

And really, they do look like they belong here, far more so than the imported cherries of Washington or the nearly-imported Mexican Fan Palms (Washingtonia Robusta) of Los Angeles and environs.  Though there are so many other reasons beyond imagination as to why one should pay a visit to Charleston, coming to see the palms is not exactly a bad thing in and of itself. 

Charleston, after all, is a special place where garden and building seemed to have been created for one another.  It's almost like a place that sprang into existence so that both concepts could be celebrated in unison.  Much like the modern lake shore of Chicago, Charleston looks as if it and the trees were trying to grow into one another.  Very few North American cities seem to make this much room for vegetation, at least not to the degree where the cityscape as a whole would be at a bit of a visual loss without it.

After all, the city owes its salvation to this wonderful tree, and the tree is etched into the human era of artifice because of that role:

Want to see more of Charleston's organic setting?  That's where I'm headed next.

Palms In The Carolina Landscape: An Historical Overview

When I recall traveling down to Fort Lauderdale back in the late 80's and early 90's for our annual winter romp from frigid Canada to tropical Southern Florida, I recall that I found narry a palm tree until one hit the Georgia-Florida border on I-95.  As if announcing that this was a truly unique land of eternal summers and palm trees even so far north near the rest of the country, palms suddenly exploded from the median.  Oh sure, Georgia nearby had a decent ground-cover of Saw Palmettos (Serenoa Repens) that emerged from the dense pinery around about Brunswick or so, but they had nothing on the veritable carpet of them that showed once one found high and dry ground past the St. Marys River.  One notable exception stood out, that being the Jelly Palm (Butia Capitata) which grew by two as a lovely frame to the entrance of a Fieldcrest towel outlet in Smithfield, North Carolina.  This was very, very much to the north of Florida, especially to the eyes of a child who liked to exaggerate distances.

This might, in fact, have been the occasion in which I started reading about trees, way back in either the second or third grade.  I was fortunate to have a mother who was wise to the concept of providing her offspring with as much book book book as possible, and no sooner did I turn to the palm pages in lovingly acquired Florida's Fabulous Trees than I found our friend the Jelly Palm, an import from exotic subtropical southern South America.  The block of text accompanying the delightful picture of the frosty-green fronds stated that the noble plant could be found as far north as Washington, D.C.  If this were so, and people liked palm trees so much, I wondered why I only ever saw the pair outside of towel land, and none more until far into the deepest reaches of Georgia.  Believe me, I looked!

Then this last year, when I made my way to a steamy South Carolina, I found palm after palm pop up starting with some lovely Jelly Palms planted beside a pool at a Days Inn off of I-26 exit 154 near Orangeburg, South Carolina.  Why yes, I do take botanical observation locations seriously!  Anyway, anywhere downstream from that location was awash in palms as part of the landscaping.  It seems that the last two decades have seen a flurry of palm planting as people are discovering the hardier species can take a few cold nights on an otherwise humid subtropical landscape.  Humorously enough, to the equal delight and chagrin of my traveling partner, I was worried that I had to stab very far south to see palms, either wild or cultivated, as common enough features in the landscape.  The truth was that they are EVERYWHERE in lowland South Carolina.  Again, I really do not recall this being the case back in my younger days, and believe me, I was every bit as botanically precise and insane back then as I am today.  This led me to question a few things, namely just how prevalent the mighty Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto) was in older times.  Well, to start off with, the flag of South Carolina prominently features the lovely tree:

Thanks, Open Clipart!

This flag does not date back to Colonial times, but it does feature elements of one that does.  The blue field and crescent moon date from William Moultrie's original South Carolina military flag of 1775, a flag which flew over his fort to save Charleston from capture by the British.  Despite being in command of a tactically inferior force, Moultrie successfully defended the city from initial British assault.  He found that Cabbage Palm trunks are perhaps the most amusing and surprising military grade wood material known to exist on the planet.  Cannon fire from the British ships apparently bounced right off of the palm walls of his fortress, which is fairly believable considering as how the King's navy was unable to simply plow over the weaker Carolinian forces.  In 1861, when South Carolinians were getting ready to oust what they saw as Union invaders, the modern flag seen here was raised.  The Cabbage Palm, mighty defender of Charleston, was seen as a natural symbol of defiance against out-of-state invasion, and the newly-minted Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter declared themselves the heirs of the Colonial Carolinian defenders.

Like many state flags of the South, South Carolina held on to hers once Grant reminded them that their viewpoint was inappropriate, and in some cases, these flags are a sad reminder of the racism that belies a supposed continuing crusade for subsidiarity.  Don't get me wrong, I get the point of state's rights and all, I am a Canadian and therefore hold as sacred the intense power placed into the hands of individual provinces at the expense of anything not Ontari... er... you know what I mean.  Anyway, that is a post, indeed a blog and a lifetime of political and social upheaval unto itself.  Back to the point, this is one of those Southern Flags that can stand for something above and beyond what the flag makers intended, namely because it is cool enough to have an actual tree for a central figure.  Likewise, the intent of heroic defense symbolized in said tree has its greatest meaning invested in an older and far more morally-righteous rebellion.  In the north, they crowned an American Elm (Ulmus Americana) as Liberty Trees. and the economic symbol of American independence, used even on one of the first flags of the continental army, was the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).  Down here, in warm, lush South Carolina was the Cabbage Palm.  That's right, this country had trees for symbol before it had flag-dressed women or men, eagles, chopped-up snakes, or any other sort of symbol.

So if I don't remember seeing so many of them before the cold-hardy palm craze caught on, just how widely planted were they as a landscape feature for our Second-Born ancestors?  Did they tend to leave the small space trees alone when clearing their fields of otherwise broad pines and oaks?  Did they line their streets with them?  Art from the period does not really seem to show the city as being particularly gardened, at least not nearly to the extent that it is now.  Considering the relative sophistication and connections with Britain that the city did maintain in the Georgian era, one wonders why this would be the case.  Botany was extremely popular among the planters and merchants alike, and both got rich off of a thriving plant trade.  Perhaps palms did not get much press as most gardeners did not see them as being particularly hardy or useful in the place where most of the commerce was directed, rainy and cool England (unlike today where they have gained a bit of popularity).  The palms that did start catching on in Europe in Georgian times were mostly Old World palms, notably the dates and in particular the Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix Canariensis), which saw container planting use at Versailles.  I can't say I blame them, the thing is pretty freaking cool looking, and can even be trimmed into, well, a pineapple.  Down in our yard in Florida I wanted one really bad, at least as a kid who knew nothing about the difference between plants native and exotic.  I can see the appeal for people in an age when the world was still largely being discovered by everyone and the backyard took a backseat. 

Very few Georgian era depictions of Southern life bring palms into view, however.  Magnolias appear now and then, as do moss-draped oaks, but by and large paintings of the era, in fact those up until the 1860's, seem to be Colonial versions of the romantic natural visions of John Constable.  American landscape art in general seems to emulate the dreamy, sweeping romanticism he championed.  On the one hand, the concept of broad, vast frontier wilderness is celebrated, but on the other hand, art and gardens alike seemed to want to give homage as well back to manicured England, which in turn wanted to be more flowing and open like North America, and yes, I seem to really be opening a slew of topics at this point.  I end the post with a question as much as a summary of the concept of historical overview: how were palms envisioned and used by early Americans, and where have they come today?

Wednesday Filler: The Coolest National Park Entrance Sign

Entrance signs for national parks are wonderful things to see.  Even for people who pass them by and don't otherwise give the place a second look, they have an effect on reminding the onlooker that this is a special place set aside by the nation (it takes an act of Congress to create a full park) for reasons of national significance.  Some signs are cooler than others though.

Many parks don't even put a small spray of local flora or even exotic bedding annuals at the base of their sign, but Congaree sure does.  I was expecting just another sign that I would get really exited over, but instead I found palm trees (Sabal Minor), something I never expected native this deep inland in even South Carolina.  And yes, they and other wonderful truly Subtropical things do happen to grow here, and there are a hundred other reasons why you should be thrilled when you see this sign.

Fitting Big Trees Into Small Spaces

This can be done!  Now, yes, one should plant in favor of letting nature do its thing and not confine the wild to something as ignoble as pot, but when you don't have the room and want to dwell among more than just concrete, well, there are trees that can do that.  Even better, there are native trees that can adapt oh so well.  Take this lovely creature, since we are talking about the South and all:

You know, in most places they would try to clip the thing into a fine topiary to keep it off the windows.  Not here.  This was taken on Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina.

 This is a Balcypress (Taxodium Distichum), a tree that around this part of the world gets very wet feet and often stands at the edge of rivers and lakes in actual open water.  Here it was, however, in the heart of Charleston growing practically out of the sidewalk.  It was not alone!

For those wondering, the palm is a Cabbage Palm (Sabal Palmetto), which can be found in almost every viewpoint in the city.  I think this was taken on Church street, but I am not entirely sure.

Here we have a Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana) forming a rather broad crown with such a tiny base.  Granted, the base was filling out its growing space rather impressively.

That adorable little palm growing next to it is a Dwarf Cabbage (Sabal Minor).

Clearly the people of Charleston, even with such limited space, preferred their skyline to be a mixture of artifice and nature.  Except for the some of the major streets, it seemed as if every plausible inch of the city was planted and then on a grand scale.  I have always noticed this a lot about any urban area in the South older than the past few decades; our winter home in Fort Lauderdale had a backyard featuring two seventy foot tall Royal Palms (Roystonea Regia) and a sixty foot Slash Pine (Pinus Elliottii) graced the neighboring yard.  The climate is just going to ensure that a giant scale is the default setting, and the locals don't seem to be too quick to put a stop to growth.  This is not to say that the North is lacking in such a mentality, but just that places like Charleston seem to promote a more organic approach to the city landscape.  I could probably write loads more on the topic, but I figured I would let the pictures do the talking here. 

Residents Of The Piney South: The Slash Pine

The final leg of our pine tour takes us to where the South leaves frost and snow behind, except during the coldest advances of frigid Canadian fury.  In this place the land becomes half sea, and the air is often tinged with a bit of salt or at least the smell of some rather fishy water, a land where at least an estuary or inlet is never far away.  Things are quite low here, but they are also often sandy or elevated enough to be decently drained.  Hence we have more pines, in this case another fine pine that has very long needles, often the better part of a foot.  Say hello to the Slash Pine (Pinus Elliottii).

All but one of the pictures seen here were taken at what has to be one of the most amazing places on the continent, Hunting Island State Park, just a hop, skip, and jump from Beaufort, South Carolina.  This was taken about a few hundred yards from the mighty Atlantic.

The Slash Pine has a regal form that tends to be rather thick near the top of the crown and somewhat sparser underneath, a silhouette not entirely different from an Italian Stone Pine (Pinus Pinea) and bearing the look of other typical globular pines, would that were on massive amounts of fertilizer.  This pine is nothing if not as robust looking as the rest of the flora in its home turf.  Like the rest of its companion vegetation, especially the Southeastern palms, the Slash Pine can grow in low, mucky land and is no stranger to the world where the swamp and the dry lands blend.  Granted, it can only take so much water, and so does not handle the same sort of situation where a Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) reigns supreme, such as in the Everglades.  That said, the Sea Islands are positively FULL of them, and they grow right up to the edge of the Atlantic. 

That's right, what we see here are the first trees one landing on much of the Atlantic shoreline south of Charleston would see.  I have used this picture before, but it illustrated the concept so nicely that it had to be used again.

Like the Longleaf (Pinus Palustris), they form savannas or at least something like them.  Unlike the Longleaf savannas, however, the Slash openings feel just a little sparser and sun-baked, which is odd when one considers how dense an upper crown the pine can produce. 

Looking into the edge of the forest from the Atlantic, or rather the side of Hunting Island near the pier.  Things seem dense, but...

This is what it looks like inside of that vantage point.  Again, these pines have a dense crown seemingly only at the very top.

 

At some points the older trees do form some nice shaded patches, but the ratio of sky and foliage is almost half and half even there.

 Heading southward into the heart of Florida, these savannas get positively full of Saw Palmettos (Serenoa Repens), adding to the feeling that this might be less of a savanna and more of a shrubland sheltered by a super canopy over a nearly missing main canopy, a sort of forest without a forest.  One still feels like they are in a woodland, but in general things remain somewhat open rather than like a jungle.  That sort of ambiguous classification seems to fit in nicely with the bridging role the Slash Pine performs; the other Southern pines lose steam in Central Florida as the climate and conditions transition into true tropical.  A tree that seems at home in something neither called a prairie, nor a forest, nor a swamp, but maybe a little bit of all three seems perfectly suited to a place where the seasons seem to have lost their watch and the land can't decide whether it is a part of Cuba or Georgia (no political pun intended). 

They grow insanely fast, especially compared to the Longleaf, which they are slowly replacing across the land, even farther north than where they are wild.  Many timber interests consider them just as valuable as the Longleaf, and in some cases of mistaken identity or just ease of use, landscape restorers have taken to promoting re-forestation with this species instead of the ancestral Longleaf.  Their fire ecologies are similar, and in fact they look downright terrible in pure tight stands compared to most other pines.

Even when they get thick, though, they still look a bit open!  There is no way that those Cabbage Palms (Sabal Palmetto) could grow in a stand of many other pines.  The thing is, forest diversity permitted or not, they need space to fill out to look less than sickly.

 Both are trees that flourish in a savanna setting, and the most southerly forms of the species even have a similar grass-like seedling stage.  In many ways, this is symbolic of the South trying to focus so much energy on a semi-resort climate and shove the pines and other less than trendy natives away to make room for palm tree after palm tree, exotic flowering trees, and even mild-winter cacti!  A pine, after all, is all sticky, sappy, too big, and "common".  But oh what a lovely backdrop the Slash does make, even in a town setting:

This is the one photo not taken on Hunting Island, but in Beaufort itself.  Many professional gardeners think that tall trees, even ones with a narrow profile, are too big for appreciation in one's garden, to which I have to say that such a philosophy is greedy and self-serving, contrary to the beauty of the neighborhood as a whole.  So what if you can only see the trunk...

And for that matter, one wonders why more cultivars have not been made to show off its already incredibly beautiful wild-type bark:

One would think that the bark is the reason for the name, but apparently a "slash" refers to the sort of jumbled shrubby half-swamp these giants arise from, just like a Loblolly refers to a mire of sorts, or even the scientific name of a Longleaf, Palustris, refers to the swamp (never mind that none of them like their feet entirely soaked).  I digress!  While the Longleaf ecosystem is definitely something that should not be replaced for mere economic convenience, at least the world of the Slash Pine is not too far off, and they really are quite amazing trees.  The thing is, they are a creature of the other edge of the South, the Deep South, more so than a main feature of the broader part of it.  Let's face it, when you find them even at the northern edge of their range in a place like Hunting Island, you can tell that you have arrived in a place that puts the tropical in subtropical. 

Looks a little more Florida than South Carolina in some ways...

Someone tell that Loblolly to get out of the way, people might get confused!  Can you find it?

Two Oceans

Busy outdoor day today, so just a little something I found that looked absolutely lovely: our Pacific shore, near Point Mugu, California:

And our Atlantic shore, on Hunting Island, South Carolina:

 In case you are wondering, the Pacific here is cool, a decent level of salty, and pristine blue.  The Atlantic here is warm (almost hot, thanks to the Gulf Stream), not terribly salty, and brownish, both features because of so many rivers pouring into the ocean.  The Pacific has wonderful beaches but is also quite rocky for much of its North American coastline.  Down here in California, more so towards the southern reaches, you don't tend to see a lot of trees, but rather wonderfully dense and lush chaparral (some of the plants were in a winter remission, when the California pictures were taken).  From Virginia Beach southward almost to Cape Canaveral, Florida, you get a lot of what you see above, some dunes backed by wonderful towering pine forests, and southward, including here, palms.

For now just some nice coastal scenery.  I'll revisit both places in detail later. 

Seeking A Pleasant Climate?

Tired of persistent heat, cold, rain, drought, dust, overbearing weeds?  Looking for the perfect place wherein one can keep their windows open all year, day after day, without fear for sudden rain or the sudden dash to stop a thermostat from taking control?  Do you wish to never experience anything remotely connected to "seasonal" again?

Look no further than the San Diego-Tijuana international metropolitan area!  January days in the mid 60's, July days in the mid 70's, and almost no variation otherwise!  Only 10 inches of rain a year!  Temperatures moderate enough to keep one from ever worrying about either frost or drought again!  The swaying palms of the tropics combined with the great frigid swimming pool of the California Pacific right off the backyard!

OK, so its covered in a nice layer of haze and smog much of the time and the water bills tend to be a bit extreme, but for anyone who wants a truly "in between" climate, coastal Southern California is the place to be.  The risks involve potential water hardships if California keeps overdrawing its reserves from farther afield than they ever planned to ship water in, not to mention earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, insane wildfires (at least with the current wildfire management strategies), and, you know, forgetting that the rest of the world exists, but climate wise the place can be pretty nice. 

There is probably no better place outside of Hawaii and southern Florida for growing a large assortment of palms and even quite a few tropicals.

Having the Pacific Ocean for a backdrop is also pretty nice.  Big blue moderates the temperatures and is amazing water to swim in.

That said, the environmental damage in southern California is catastrophic.  Development has almost completely changed the world there, in many cases actually adding significantly to the natural disasters, especially where wildfires are concerned.   Outside of the North American prairies, there has probably been no place worse affected than here because of the removal of native flora and fauna.  Part of this lies in the fact that precious little room is available for continued expansion (the same problem that southern Florida faces); miles inland lies the beginnings of the deserts of the interior, and even walking a few blocks away from the beach turns up the temperature a few degrees.  Still, people will keep moving to sunny Cali so long as the natural living conditions keep remaining so amazing.  Midwesterners, Lakers, and Northeasterners often look on at such places in envy for the lack of general extremes they have, especially when contending with too much or too little of the good things like moisture, chills, and heats. 

Still, you can never slide down a hill on a sled here in the wintertime.  You can't have many kinds of fruit trees that need a little winter chill to properly fruit.  You can't even make good wine when the heat turns up (not that I am... heh... in any way unappreciative of California wines.  Napa can still manage to get the heat when it needs to.  You know, if you want to make pretentious statements about superiority.)!  Eternal spring is not for everyone or everything.  I often remember this when I feel gloomy over a Michigan late spring, early frost, baking July, or overly frigid January.  We do, after all, have amazing forests, prairies, and water that could make even the majestic Pacific blush.  Perhaps the best thing to do is appreciate what one has and try to make the most of it and learn all one can about it.  The pleasant climate might just end up being the one where the most familiar things flourish. 

Ocean Beach, California

Your typical southern California beach scene, with a layer of pollution faintly visible on the horizon, overpriced condominiums, expensive parking, and for some reason an agave in full bloom growing wild on the sand.

It seemed like a pleasant picture, so I thought I would use it.  The title is the location of the beach.  Like many coastal towns, everything is densely packed in and almost no one has a private stretch of ocean front.  Most of the small yards get paved over, and those that do not get planted with palm trees, mostly the tall-growing, salt-tolerant Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia Robusta).

The neighboring community of Sunset Cliffs features slightly larger yards, some houses even having pools.  For the most part, however, things are packed as tight as sardines in a can.  Ironically, things here in the seaside high rent district are just as packed here as they are across the border in the slums of Tijuana.  In contrast, densely populated seaside Miami and Fort Lauderdale feature your average size yards and free parking lots, despite space also being a premium in a southern Florida that is otherwise largely too wet and spongy to support much in the way of a city.

The median house price in Fort Lauderdale and Miami closer to the ocean and intercoastal waterway is around $250,000 U.S. currency.  The median house price in San Diego and affiliated towns such as Ocean Beach is $520,000 and more.  Florida, it seems, is the place to get a vacation home, whereas California is the place to live.  Both places have pleasant climates, southern Florida being largely tropical and coastal southern California being what can best be described as "eternal spring", never much deviating from 60-70 year round.  Both places get tons of sunshine.  Florida can present hurricanes, which used to be dealt with by having homes constructed of concrete (it worked).  Coastal southern California can present earthquakes and tsunamis.  Things in general are far more expensive in California than they are in Florida, and yet still the demand for real estate is so much higher in the land of the easy going sunset.  Maybe it is something in the name... people have been attracted to her so strongly for nearly 250 years now.  Southern Florida?  Maybe for the past 70 years or so, once they started cutting down the mangroves.

I happen to like mangroves.  And coconut palms.  And fun Caribbean sea shells.  Still, that crisp Pacific water does feel pretty amazing, and it has a lack of dangerous jellyfish near the beaches in Cali, along with fun things like kelp and sea lions.  To each their own!

The Great Mojave Snowstorm of 2008

With the possible exception of taking an extremely southerly route through Mexico, there is no guaranteed safe passage across North American in the wintertime in the worst of years.  Yes, one can assume that travel along the Gulf will not result in encountering any sudden blasts of winter weather, but even Houston and New Orleans have seen nights in the 20s and a good blast of snow now and then.  Likewise, despite encountering some of the driest lands in the world moving further west, the desert seems to forget it is a desert sometimes, and otherwise bone dry, 110+ degree locations in the summer can turn into frigid deathtraps in which the local driving population is sorely unprepared.  In December 2008 in the Mojave Desert, the land became blanketed with well over two feet of snow.  

Now, yes, those are desert evergreen plants in that picture, and what you see is a normally toasty portion of the Mojave outside of Baker, California.  The snow also persisted for over a week, with temperatures remaining low for the duration.  It was a strange event, all the more so because everything else on the trans-continental trip had not at all prepared me for an actual blizzard.  Yes, there was an absolute terror of a snowstorm in the Rockies, and yes, the higher elevations around a place as close as Cedar City, Utah, were frigid in the single digits, but 30 miles later, a descent into the Mojave raised the temperatures into the 50s and the snow was melted, leaving the red landscape of St. George and environs even more brilliant than normal.  I did not have an unreasonable expectation in assuming that the even lower Las Vegas would feature similar milder conditions.  Instead, a blizzard ripped across I-15 near the end of the strip.

Yes, this is really Las Vegas, Nevada.  Let me tell you, the rates on rooms were amazing that night!

This was a really interesting experience, to say the least.  At the start of the descent into Las Vegas Valley, the external thermometer on the car was reading 46 degrees.  A drop from St. George's high of 50, but not a surprising one considering that there were fewer gaps in the clouds.  Then the numbers kept getting lower every mile until Las Vegas was reporting a chilly 32.  I wondered when the few raindrops falling from the now solid cloud sky would turn to snow, and sure enough, the normally baked landscape played host to a fair impression of a Great Lakes blizzard.  

Now, again, we are a cold continent.  Frost has been reported everywhere throughout our land except the Florida Keys, a thin strip of coastline in extreme southern California, and the tropical parts of Mexico (though even a place as far south as Tampico has seen it).  Jacksonville, Florida has seen snowfalls of several inches that managed to stick around for a while, and the last few years have seen arctic outbreaks which have threatened the citrus crops in the state.  At the same time, while these are not entirely unexpected occurrences, they are also not normal by any stretch of the imagination.  An average December day in the Mojave sits anywhere from the mid-50s to lower 60s, depending on elevation.  Some of the higher rises in the desert might see a dusting now and then, but it is hardly persistent.  The pools in Las Vegas stay open all year, and palm trees are a reality of landscaping throughout the region.  Worst of all, they do not have snow plows at the ready around these parts, and I-15 became a parking lot at the border with California.  This, of course, led to a night in Vegas and a chance to see what happens to palms in the snow.

This would be the famous "Whiskey Pete's" in tourist tr... er Primm, Nevada.  The hotel was packed with stalled travelers.  

Let me tell you, palms and snow do not mix.  Your hardly desert dwellers like the California Fan Palm (Washingtonia Filifera) and such are used to the occasional upset like this, but they still get weighed down and look very, very sad.  In the same fashion, the local drivers know that things are more dangerous when frozen and slushy, but like the palms bent under the weight of the snow, they cannot help but apply their defenses and hardiness with a lack of grace and hit the brakes hard enough to get locked into some truly embarrassing fish-tailing.  Again, this can happen, but it rarely does, but then it also gets remembered.  While it might be convenient to blame climate change for a mess like this (and the frequency of such events does tend to support the theories out there), the fact is that travelers have historically encountered such shocking visits from Father Winter.  Juan Bautista de Anza and his expedition, in fact, encountered one heck of a snowstorm down in the warmer Sonoran Desert not far from Palm Springs, California!  

Southbound I-15 approaching the 4,900 foot pass that in the Mescal range near the California/Nevada border.

 Travel inconveniences aside, the snow tends to melt pretty quickly in the lower elevations and urban areas.  By the next day, downtown Las Vegas had chunks of ice in the shadows of buildings, but not much in the way of snow except a little dusting on the grass and in the trees.  The higher elevations, though, like the mountains pictured above near Ivanpah Dry Lake in southern California, continued to carry a load of the white stuff well into the next week.  The result was stunning, to say the least, and even left dry lakes like Ivanpah with a bit of water in them for a while.

The Heat Continues, and the Water Does Not

In the past week lower Michigan was finally blessed with some deep, soaking rains that persisted for several hours on separate occasions.  The problem is, this was not nearly enough to keep us out of some rather dry conditions.  Other places have been hit far worse, and the wildfire season is out of control as an abundance of dry fuel is turning parts of the Rockies, Utah, and California into hell on earth.  The continent already is a rather dry place, even in our wettest locations, and the life here has adapted somewhat to droughts which are never far around the corner.  Our deserts, for instance, are some truly amazing places that see some of the hottest temperatures on the planet, as well as some of the least precipitation, and yet are often abundantly full of life that makes the best of the situation.

Some of the desert dwellers, in fact, are studies in extremes themselves.  Take the California Fan Palm (Washingtonia Filifera), for instance, which is only found in the deserts, and then only at areas where they are rooted in wet soils owing to a small rising of groundwater along fault lines that creates small oases.

Taken at the Oasis of Mara, Twentynine Palms, California.

Yes, that is indeed standing water in the middle of those palms, right in the middle of an otherwise bone dry desert.  The palms grow because of it, and they also help shade the water from otherwise evaporating as soon as it hits the surface.  Further east, we have wonderful things like prairie fens that have similar water loving species that can take full exposure to the sun and summer heat without much in the way of regular rainfall.  I have to admit, this post was inspired by the triple digits we experienced here today, and looking out at a parched lawn that looks far less impressive than a fen or oasis and has grass on it that was probably not meant for this part of the world, 40 inches of regular precipitation or not.  This is yet another reason for those of who live here to go native and plant more trees and other things that do belong here.

The Eastern Forests and Plant Succession

This was going to be another Q and A, but I ran into this question that deserved an extended response:

Q: It really is hard to imagine prairies existing so far east.  Are you sure that some of them are not just abandoned fields?  I mean I know you explained that we once got a lot of fires and such here, but we also have a lot of rain and water in general, and most land that I have seen go to seed again turns into a forest in a bit of time.  I think you just get excited when you find wildflowers.

A: More of a comment than a question.  Maybe both?  Cuomment?  Prairies and more so savannas existed well into areas that we imagine are only forests.  Central Mississippi and Alabama, both notable for being quite humid and rainy places, once had an extensive band of tallgrass prairie known as the Black Belt.  The pine flats stretching from Long Island to Miami were a mosaic of thicker forests merged with savannas, which southward also include wonderful shrubs in the underbrush like the Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal Minor):

Google Earth Streetview at above coordinates, or just south of Vero Beach, Florida, on I-95, east side, northbound.  

All of these areas were much more prone to regular rainfall than the interior plains, but what they shared in common, indeed, what makes grasslands possible is a combination of moisture, fire, soil, and sun exposure.   In earlier posts about how savannas and eastern grasslands work, I noted that the forest and grass were locked into a never-ending natural battle against one another that depended greatly on the specific combinations of the above ingredients.  In places a bit further off of the front lines, the ingredients would favor one over the other.  The suppression of natural fire regimes from the nineteenth century onward have skewed such patterns, but in other ways have showed us accelerated models of what a transition from a seemingly barren prairie into a lush forest can look like, often in a period of a few decades or even less.  While the above picture is somewhat natural and "ordinary", it is also somewhat indicative of what happens when the ingredients have been altered.  The shrubs are starting to take over far more than they otherwise would, and the forest is, well, turning into a forest rather than a savanna or "pine barrens".

Was the above stretch of land ever a thick forest?  It might have been, and it might be again, which is part of the wonderful process known as plant succession that defines the shifting mosaic of landscapes that is natural eastern North America.  Fortunately, there are ways to advance beyond conjecture to figure out what used to be "open" and what used to be "closed", ways which also do a lovely job illustrating what succession is all about.

First of all, we can check records from those who came before us.  When Europeans landed on these shores, they were often amazed at the world that stretched before them, leaving us journals and other accounts of what they found as they pressed into the interior.  While these days we get excited over things like skyscrapers and deluxe shopping malls, people then noticed things like big trees, rocks, and even landscapes that surprised them, like the "park like lands of pleasant Michigan".  We tend to think of our ancestors as hacking their way through a primeval forest that was untouched by the native folk, when the truth of the matter is that they often had a fascinating voyage of discovery and enjoyed the variation in the landscape.

Secondly, we can take a look at what is actually in patches of land like the above shot.  If this was once a "solid forest", there would be a lot of stumps in the palmettos, either from the passing of lumber men or a raging inferno, the latter of which would have taken out much more of the canopy and left us with a different forest from what we see, namely one with either fewer or no trees, or one far more arboreal, as in here:

Streetview, the special friend takes us to I-95 northbound again, this time just south of Jacksonville, Florida.

Where we do have more of a forest, we can also take notice of isolated elements in the canopy.  Where we do have either a really broad tree or one that stands out from the rest of a dominate stand of just a few species, this can indicate that at one point this area did have ground that was exposed.  Why is this?  Well, a canopy, while not exactly perfectly uniform, does more or less expand up and out at a rate that favors quicker growing species which tend to dominate everything else, such as maples.  Very rarely does an opening stay exposed long enough for a massive oak or pine to out-compete a bunch of sun-struck maples.  A really broad oak, for example, might be a sign that the area was once an oak savanna.

Taken in Island Lake State Recreation Area, Michigan.

A lone trooper like this Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) almost certainly means that instead of growing so well in the shade of the canopy, the tree is a survivor of something far more exposed.

Taken at Brighton State Recreation Area, Michigan.  Yes, I know it looks like an Eastern Hemlock.

In fact, it would not be too out of place to suggest that the above scene may have once looked like this:

At an edge of Island Lake State Recreation Area, Michigan.  

Now I don't know the history of the site pictured well enough to claim it is an actual grassland, either emerging or remnant, but the soil is rather sandy (the hills around there, in fact, are stabilized dunes).  In any case, Eastern Red Cedar is an opportunist that can really only get started and prosper under sunny conditions, and often pioneers tree cover on abandoned fields.  Here it is a passing feature of changing landscape.  In more greatly open areas, such as parts of Oklahoma, it is native but actually considered a noxious weed!  I have seen some on oak savannas, which have always been a bit of a misnomer to me anyway.  Yes, oaks are resistant to fire and can handle the drier conditions offered by exposure, but so can these things, junipers, and pines.  


Regardless of what tree deserves the crown of the landscape, our isolated friends are but another way of showing us that nature is not as compartmentalized as we suspect her to be, but always in motion.  This is how we can get from this: 

Taken at Island Lake State Recreation Area, Michigan.  Prairie Remnant converging into Oak Savanna.

To this: 

Taken at Brighton State Recreation Area, Michigan.  Prairie Remnant with edges dominated by savanna converging into mature Oak-Hickory forest.

To this: 

Taken at Brighton State Recreation Area, Michigan.  A little bit of everything, but mostly becoming a mature Maple-Beech forest, a half mile from the above photo.

Basically, nature provides new conditions that the flora of the area then move in to take advantage of.  At first, sun-loving plants that can tolerate not only a bake but also some rather dry soil dominate the situation.  They can be maintained by fires even if they only occur once every few years to a decade, as competing shrubs and trees will be burned out.  Sometimes, however, the fires will not come around, animals such as deer will not graze on certain patches of ground during years of abundance, and the soil quality might have been good enough to allow some species to make a rebound quicker than others.  Given the chance, many areas of eastern North America will indeed progress from grassland to savanna to a dry forest to a more moist forest.  Again, it all depends on the ingredients available, how they are used, and how much they are used.  


Nature is not static.  Yes, we have prairies so far east of the drier rain shadow of the Rockies not because we share general climate conditions with the plains states, but because nature has provided opportunities for these ecosystems to flourish, but they are hardly always passing elements of the landscape.  This also means that not everything was a forest before we came by and plowed it all into farms and cities.  The forest, as much as the grassland, was dependent on conditions to make it possible in the first place.  Was there a lot of forest?  Yes.  Was there also enough open and park-like land to be noticeable?  Yes.  Very often we do have areas that have been forest for a very long time, often hundreds of years.  Sometimes we even get lucky enough to see a rather lovely marriage of the different worlds.

Taken at Brighton State Recreation Area, Michigan.  In the middle of a mature Oak-Hickory forest we have a shaft of sunlight penetrating to the forest floor and letting a Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbekia Hurta) grow amidst its much taller friends.