California Natives in Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History Garden

The Pacific Grove Natural History Museum has a garden of native plants. In this post I share my photos from a visit in April. It meets two goals: a travel post and an affirmation that planting natives is not a hardship, you can have beautiful plants.

The first is the spectacular California flannel bush, Fremontidendron californicum (hibiscus family, Malvaceae). It is a native, fast-growing shrub (to 30'). The leaves and twigs are covered in a soft fuzz, the flannel. The scientific name honors J. C. Fremont (1813-1890) who explored California in the 1840s and took control of California for the United States in 1846. (See bios link). The plant is also commonly called fremontia, its former scientific name (Fremontidendron = Fremont-tree). 

California flannel bush, Fremontidendron californicum

Native Plants for Wildlife: Details, Details

I was easy to convince that native animals and the plants they depend on are declining, hit by the double whammy of land development and competition from introduced species. DougTallamy's solution--that we all grow some native plants in our yards and foster native animals by tolerating insect damage --birds eat insects! -- also made sense to me. (See more on the logic: link). Thus, I reviewed my yard and found a few natives, but many more garden plants introduced from Eurasia, as well as a nice collection of exotic weeds. So I resolved last winter not to add any plant that wasn't native (for a while at least) and replace plants that died with natives. 

The photo has several natives but as many nonnatives

Those were better as resolutions than as reality. 

Beautiful, Invasive Dame's Rocket, Hesperis matronalis

Dame's rocket (Hesperis matronalis mustard family, Brassicaceae) is an obvious garden plant with its bright red-purple flowers. But it grew so well in North America it is now on noxious weed lists across the U.S.

dames rocket, Hesperis matronalis

The Less Aggressive Iceplant, Sea-Fig, Carprobrotus chilensis, in California

I wrote last week about highway iceplant, Carprobrotus edulis (link). In 1970 as a new graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, I chose to write a paper about it. I had an Anthropology-Zoology major and writing a paper about a plant for Botany Department professor Herbert Baker was well out of my comfort zone. It is true, as I indicated last week, that I seized on iceplant as conspicuous, but there was more to it. During breaks, my roommates and I explored California, especially the coastline. I saw icesplant hanging off the cliffs at the edge of the Pacific and enjoyed incorporating my observatioins and photos into my assignment. Botanists go interesting places, for work.

Iceplant, Carpobrotus chilensis, California coast 1970
There's a pink flower in the center, 1/5 of the way down

The Aggressive Highway Iceplant, Carprobrotus edulis, in California

Visiting coastal California, you can't miss iceplant (Carprobrotus edulis). It grows in big patchs of pointy green fingers, covering the ground in a monoculture. Probably every visitor and resident in California gets to know it. In 1970, I was a new graduate student taking a Genetic Ecology course  at the University of California, Berkeley, from Herbert Baker. He assigned a research paper about a plant. I had no idea what I was doing. I saw iceplant and chose that for my project. 

highway iceplant, Carprobrotus edulis

So I go way back with iceplant. Iceplant is from South Africa. It was brought to California a hundred years ago and widely planted to stop erosion. It did that pretty well, and was an easy, low maintenance plant, so roads departments and parks, and people generally, planted it all over the place. In 1970 it was very widespread and people were just starting to wonder if that was good thing.

Iceplant on the Berkely campus 1970