Just very sad. What really made me mad today was what the US supreme court did...the ruling for exxon mobil crooks against those in Alaska! It's a crime I tell ya!

Sounds to me all of California will be like the proverbial "empty lot next door"..u-no,non native everything except some straggly poppies or Sycamore. No Oaks,or mixed woodland species..too dry,hot.

That's really sad... what a disaster this country / state has been in the last several years. Seems like everything is bad news, and the good news is some celebrity news flash I could care less about.

I'm trying to incorporate more Cal Natives into my garden when possible. We might be the few who will soon have 'rare' cal natives in our gardens that everyone wants!

I'm used to swimming against the current and as far as I'm concerned it's just more global warming hysteria. Although I will agree that we have a serious problem with some invasive plants. - Mike

I agree with Mike's post above on both points.

Let's not forget the hand of man. In the news right now is UC Berkeley who's regents want to chop down a grove of old growth native live oaks just to expand some athletic building. In Southern California, our local mountains have been plagued by drought and pollution which has weakened many of the pine trees making them vulnerable to disease and pine bark beetles. Now there is news that global warming is contributing to the death of the Alaskan, Canadian salmon population (warming water has caused a bloom of a fish fungus that is killing the fish as they move upstream to spawn.) Herring population (food fish for the salmon) are dying off. Time will tell when our highest elevation conifers like white fir, lodgepole pine and even sugar pine will continue to survive (here in SoCal).

One of those stories that includes the defensive armor "could be".

cudda, wudda

The one thing these articles avoid like the plague, is that global temperatures, historically, have changed anyway.

That will be man's biggest dilemna, is that if mother nature is destined to cool or heat the globe anyway, how much money would mankind waste in a futile effort to try and "freeze" climates that may be impossible to freeze.

It would be like people trying to stop erosion before the Grand Canyon even formed.

Anyone understand that side of the coin?

It was just this year that I started thinking about how mankind tries to freeze-in-time, what man sees right now. Meanwhile, the planet's face has been changing century after century.

M. D. Vaden of Oregon

In the Think-Tank to your north - LOL

"The one thing these articles avoid like the plague, is that global temperatures, historically, have changed anyway."

Of course global temperatures have changed over the lifetime of our planet. I've never read of any scientists involved in climate studies on global warming that deny this. The issue is not whether there have been past changes like we are presently confronting but rather the rapidity of these current changes and their likely causes. The change in the rate of rising sea levels is just one example. If you read the article linked you will find past and current data. And I got that with just one little google search. I'm sure you could find many more examples with minimal effort. : )

Here is a link that might be useful: rise of sea levels

I too am still skeptical about global warming. For two reasons:

First, man (gender neutral sense) is an astonishingly arrogant creature and nowhere is this arrogance seen more clearly than in the global warming "debate". A single category 3 hurricane dissipates more energy in a day than would be released by the detonation of every nuclear weapon that ever existed but we think we are the most likely cause of an increase in the earth's temperatures?

Second, "cui bono?" IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I'm no rightwing nutcase who is worried about a one world government, I am simply aware of the fact that it is always in the nature of government to increase in size and consolidate power; crisis provide the justification for the increase. This tendency is particularly insidious in republican forms of government because none of the actors need act in bad faith to bring about the consolidation. There is a very strong desire to be seen as doing something, even if it's wrong (by the time the mistake is uncovered, there's an excellent chance those responsible for it will have left office).

Ryan

> A single category 3 hurricane dissipates more energy in > a day than would be released by the detonation of every > nuclear weapon that ever existed but we think we are the > most likely cause of an increase in the earth's
> temperatures?

How is that relevant? Nobody has claimed that we are directly applying heat to the atmosphere.

Looks like this topic is straying into a general discussion one. Is there still a forum on here where people can rant about non-gardening stuff? I'd hate to see it become like Dave's Garden site during election time.

skrip,

Good point.

So, what endangered natives are you growing in your garden :-).

Ryan

Is it legal to propagate listed endangered natives?

Certainly it is legal to propagate anything that you have in your own garden already, or is a nursery grown plant. It is illegal, however, to collect cuttings or seed of listed endangered plant species without proper permits, even if the intent is to keep the species from becoming extinct. I know that this has been a problem with certain very rare wildflower species that some growers such as Annie's Annuals have tried to propagate; even when the seed comes from second generation nursery sown plants, it has caught the attention of native plant people who have questioned the source of the seed, and created problems for the nursery.

What I don't like about these kind of articles is that they have no real call to action except to plead for more funding for state programs. Given the budget problems we've been experiencing, how likely is that? And why should we wait for the world's governments to save us? I get the feeling that this article wasn't directed at ordinary readers at all, but at policy makers.

When modern western science was in its infancy during the Enlightenment era, it was promoted by wealthy and not-so-wealthy amateurs through clubs and organizations, and much of the plant information we have comes from them. What can we do as hobbyists to preserve these kinds of endangered species? It seems a lot of these plants wouldn't do well in the backyard of someone living in the LA basin, since global warming is anticipated to be the cause of the extinctions.

It would have been more useful to tell people where they can volunteer or donate to start saving plants now. Yes, there's the California Native Plant Society, but is anyone actively moving plants out of the area? And what can we do to help?

boondoggle,

Just because the plants aren't expected to persist naturally in their native range doesn't mean they won't survive in a garden setting inside their present range - something any real gardener knows instinctively though we might not think about it: How many plants in your garden would survive without your intervention in the form of additional water, fertilizer, weed removal or special soil preparation?

As to the collection issue there are a number of options:

1. Get a permit - probably not practical, I don't know what the permit process entails.

2. Focus on propagating plants that are of interest but not yet listed as endangered.

3. In certain cases you would be violating the letter of the law but still acting within the intent of the law if you chose to make a collection of an endangered plant without a permit - the dozers are on their way to clear land for a new development for example.

In response to the first concern you raised, the cynic in me says that the end in sight is not protection of endangered species but greater government control of our lives. I think it is worth noting that the environmental movement was born during a period of profound mistrust of all institutions whether public or private. The best way to silence your critics is to co-opt the rhetoric (and to a degree the goals) of your critics.

Ryan

Although 2/3 of CA plants may be facing extinction, only a handful are actually listed as endangered or threatened by the State or Federal government. That leaves a lot of rare plants that an be legally handled by any of us, and most of those will grow in a garden pretty easily as long as the proper conditions are provided. Anyone worried about the extinction of native plants should try to have at least a portion of the yard in natives. One of the main reasons that plants are threatened with extinction is that development (urban/suburban, agricultural, highways) has created barriers to the spread of native plants. As climate changes either due to man's actions or natural causes, plants have always migrated north, south, upslope, inland, or whatever, staying within a climate that they can tolerate. But now as natural habitats become fragmented by cities, farms, highways, or other places unsuitable to native plants, the natives (at least some of them) can't spread into new areas and may simply die out as climate or other conditions change. If we all had even a little bit of native vegetation in our yards, we might create stepping stones for natives to move through cities and suburbs as climate shifts. Your small patch of native vegetation may be just a tiny start toward helping native plants, but most development takes place in small steps too, and look how successful that has been.

"If we all had even a little bit of native vegetation in our yards, we might create stepping stones for natives to move through cities and suburbs as climate shifts. "

Stepping stones for natives - love it! : )

Now a question - what about planting a native variety that isn't native to your area? For example, I planted three Sierra Blue ceanothus at the top of my west slope. But I don't live in the Sierras (darn!) but rather on the northern slopes of the San Gabriels. We have lots of native white flowering ceanothus and a few with light blue flowers, but I wanted some with deep blue flowers near my home. Is it wrong to introduce a northern variety into my southern gardens or is it a non issue since they probably (?) won't spread and take over the habitat of the native varieties?

Your thoughts?

Many of the Ceanothus offered by nurseries are hybrids, as is (I believe) "Sierra Blue." They may or may not be able to cross with wild plants. Cross-pollination of closely-related species is a problem in gardens, even -- or especially -- in big botanical gardens, where they have lots of closely-related species in close proximity. Gardens that contain species not native to the area and that are adjacent to natural populations of close relatives would likely cause genetic contamination of the natural plants. My guess is that it's a rare native-plant enthusiast who cultivates only plants native to and genetically identical to those in their immediate area. Some native plants are not correctly identified by the nurseries, further complicating the problem. Starter cuttings get passed from nursery to nursery, and meanwhile none of the people involved have ever seen the plant in nature and don't know what it really looks like. Our native plant gardens may indeed create "islands" or "stepping stones" of native species, but if these species were to become extinct in nature, and their restoration were to depend upon what we have growing in our gardens, then the restored plants would often be different from the original, which might even be unrecoverable.

What I got from the article is that wthe warming trend is a gradual one and the plants 'migrate' over a long period of time. This isn't happening tomorrow.

The more gardeners who get interested in growing natives the better it will be.

I think encroachment of cities is a more immediate danger.

Matilija poppy is not endangered yet but much of its natural range is being plowed under for housing projects. It's future may be secured in gardens -some of them in England.

Much of the talk about global warming is hype used to fuel political agendas. It's easier to moan about global warming and promise to set up some fund for it than to fix a concrete problem like corruption in government.

AI remember when I was a kid there were some pundits talking about global cooling.

Current knowledge about the workings of weather and climate is several orders of magnitude greater now than it was 30+ years ago. The 1970s forecast of global cooling was based upon the knowledge that we are in an interglacial period, which is still true. But much else about weather and climate was unknown. The nature of science is a journey of discovery from darkness to light.

But, I agree: we should do nothing. I want our grandchildren to know who could have prevented or mitigated their parlous condition but who chose to do nothing.

I'm not to sure about that logic, Dis. There are other threats to endangered species in CA like urbanization and invasives, so therefore we should ignore peer-reviewed scientific studies about an overarching threat to CA plants?

There was nothing about the government in that article, just botantists and other plant experts. I think this quote sums up what some others have said here about trying to incorporate rare species into their gardens, "Planning for plant refugees will become a new but important concept for natural reserves to think about," said biologist Brent Mishler, director of the University and Jepson Herbaria at UC Berkeley, the state's most important flora collection.

In aggregate, CA urban and rural gardeners can create mini-plant refuges.

I think you missed the bulk of my post. Though I did not use the word "urbanization" I did mention it (encroachment of cities) as a more immediate threat. I also mentioned gardener growing natives.

I don't think there is much we can do about global warming as it is part of the earth's weather cycle. When Mount Pinatubo blew it put more into the atmosphere than man has since the dawn of the industrial age. The garbage we put into the environment has a more immediate effect on the flora and fauna. It's also bad for us. I doubt it has that much effect on the earth weather cycle.

I am already doing what I can do and that is planting natives in my garden, avoiding putting nasty chemicals in it, recycling what I can and planting oxygen factories in the form of trees.

- a difficult task given... obstacles presented by suburban sprawl.

Overpopulation, unfettered illegal immigration, non-enforcement of zoning regulations, sanctuary cities, social service policies/programs that encourage people to procreate without having the means to support themselves or their children, developers continuing to build adjacent to wilderness areas without consideration of water, roads, etc.