Just getting back to your original question, I would have thought that the vast majority of named fossil plants represent extinct species, especially those from before about the mid-Tertiary. In fact you would be hard-put to find any from the Cretaceous or earlier that are clearly conspecific with a living plant. I doubt that even the Ginkgo and the Wollemi Pine fossils are quite identical with the modern species. Many plant fossils belong to families, orders or classes that are totally extinct, e.g. all the 'seed fern' groups. I am no expert on plant fossils, but would guess that many thousands have been given names. The major problem has been establishing which fossil leaf, stem, or wood belongs with which flower, fruit, cone, seed, etc, as most fossils are only frgaments of the plant. As for where you can access names of fossil plants, I suspect most are in musty old volumes and specialist periodicals in museum libraries. Perhaps there is a fossil plant equivalent of the IPNI database, but where?

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.

Jay ----I have gravel mulch (medium sized river rock pebbles) on the entire property, front and back. We hauled in tons. It comes with pros and cons. CONS---- digging is more difficult + you have to push the gravel away if digging up a plant, otherwise you bury the gravel. I am in the process of thinning out some grasses and I don't use a shovel for this reason. I'm using a hori-hori knife so I don't do too much disturbance to the gravel. A hoe like woods tea described wouldn't work either. You have to get down on your knees and pull stuff in gravel, often working your fingers into the space between the pebbles to grab hold of the weed. It gets washed down or buried under soil if on a slope or sometimes just during a heavy rain even when not on much of a slope. Gravel can work itself down pretty deep over time. Seeds come up very easy in it, that can be a pro or a con. It works both ways for me Your knees get sore if you garden like me and like to squat down with your knee or knees on the ground. When you rake leaves, you also rake gravel and I really hate leaves on my gravel. I have to sort out what I rake up so I don't toss my "we paid for that gravel and I ain't tossing it" gravel. PROS----It looks great and of course never breaks down. Its kind of the same effect you get when it snows and the garden looks neat with all that consistent layer of white around the plants instead of dark soil or leaves etc. You can go out right after a rain and walk around. It melts the snow off fast in winter and keeps the ground warmer on sunny winter days which we have a lot of. Its also good for drainage or plants that don't like wet feet or suffer crown rot on winter, it wicks away water rather than holding it around the plant base and it keeps the soil moist down low and provides a good sponge on top so water soaks in fast compared to compacted dry soil where you easily get runoff when it gets dry. We put in a deep layer of coarse sand under the river rock which also helps with good drainage. I keep it well weeded but weeds are easy to pull in that sandy soil and I like weeding so its not a problem for me to keep the parts clear that I want to stay clear. I do a lot of weeding in the gravel. I agree with woodstea, you don't need (or want) to add nitrogen. I don't think wood chip types of mulch look right around prairie plants myself, its too artificial and urban-flower-beddish looking. I've seen some yards where people leave swaths of trimmed grass creating defined areas set off by large, usually curved areas of prairie or tall grasses that grow pretty thick. It looks very neat, well defined yet still natural and in a case like that you wouldn't need mulch of any kind, the plants would shade the soil. Just cut it back in spring (easy). I have to trim everything by hand, one plant at a time, because we tossed the mower and besides, you wouldn't want to mow over or around the area with small pebbles that could fly out, those pebbles have a way of escaping from where they were put. We have several large rocks among the gravel and I like the way they look, especially in winter but they tend to get a bit lost in summer.

Hi Judy Blush Veranda is a floribunda and the 2 new Parfuma are HTs. Also Blush does not have the fragrance of these new roses. Blush does have a problem opening in damp weather, but it opens well in my dry climate. I don't think there is much similarity. First Crush does not have many petals and opens and finishes fairly fast, but puts out a lot of flowers. It is quite pastel in my warmer climate and probably much more pink in cooler climates and opens quite well in all climates. Savannah on the other hand has a lot of petals and eventually opens into a really large flat cup. It is a surprisingly long lasting cut given all the petals (more than 6 days in my vase here). The flower is much larger than Blush when fully open and it holds a strong pink color. When it is opening the center is a pretty salmon pink. I don't see problems with it opening in damp weather but it can get a vegetative green center when night temperatures are really cold - but that is now the rage in the cut flower business. Summer Romance is a strong shade of pink and a Floribunda. Free blooming, very productive and I have seen no problems with the flower opening in any weather condition. It probably is my favorite rose scent - really complex with some citrus undertones. I am almost addicted to smelling this rose! Sorry to hear about your Christiana Herzogin. Do know we will introduce nearly all of the Kordes here in N. America usually about one year after they are introduced in Europe so you don't have to risk a rose shipping from Europe. We will be introducing C. Herzogin under the name Earth Angel - the peony shaped flower will be a big hit with those that like peonies and the fragrance is quite nice. Pink Veranda we have renamed Pink Martini taking it out of the Veranda series as it was just too enthusiastic a grower for this series. For me it is about 3.5' x 3.5'. It puts out an amazing amount of bright pink blooms. Disease resistance is quite good. No fragrance of note,, but it makes quite a statement in the garden with all those blooms. It is called Moin Moin in Germany. Summersrhythm I am located in Oregon - actually a hot and dry part of the State. The roses have been at Lowe's stores in the east but not in the western States yet. Distribution depends on nursery growers selling to Lowe's so what you see at a Lowe's store will vary from region to region. Quite a few of the mail order companies do have the Parfuma roses and Savannah.