States Struggle to Rein in Runaway Garden Plants

On a misty summer morning, ecologist Christy Brigham sinks down to the sand at Point Mugu State Park, part of the patchwork of federal, state and private lands in Los Angeles County's Santa Monica Mountains. She watches a darkling beetle forage among rare dune plants -- lacy, lavender sand verbenas and beach primroses, which resemble large buttercups. When Brigham came to this area eight years ago to work for the National Park Service, she thought she'd become an expert on plants like these, part of the region's unique Mediterranean-climate flora. But instead, she's spent most of her time dealing with common plants, many of them fugitives from local gardens and nurseries. Continue reading on the High Country News website.

Meet the Bark Beetles

In the last decade, tiny forest-dwelling beetles have wiped out pine trees on millions of acres in the Canadian and American West, including Southern California. The rest of the state has been largely spared, but forest ecologists say that's likely to change.

Learn why in this piece I reported for KQED's Climate Watch.

This Summer I was fortunate to take a hike with Mickey Long, who supervises natural areas for LA County Parks and Recreation. I asked him to join me at one of the more depressing spots in the Angeles Forest front country--the trail from Chantry Flat to Stuartevant Falls.

Although we spotted a number of wildflowers along the fire road descending into Big Santa Anita Canyon--including indian pinks and native delphinium (both pictured below)--we sampled a Smorgasbord of weeds: annual grasses, Spanish broom, euphorbia, arundo, bladder senna, eucalyptus, even rock roses. "Aesthetically there's something missing from the landscape," said Long, "both in form and function. The danger here is,

even though we're seeing plenty of native plant habitat, if a fire comes through, the weeds will get the upper hand."

Long pointed out Western Fence and whiptail lizards, hunting for bugs in the underbrush. He said the non-native grasses don't support the variety of insects that the native plants do.

Things didn't get any more cheerful when we arrived at the stream.

English ivy blankets 3.5 miles of stream bank.

Cabin owners planted the ivy decades ago and it's run amok. To keep the alders alive, they clip it off of the trunks. But the ivy (with a little help from some Himalayan blackberry) has crowded out most of the native plants. On a subsequent trip I counted only three Humboldt lilies (pictured up top) persisting along the stream.

Long said no one has studied the effect of the ivy infestation on native animals, but "there's not too many ways this could be beneficial to a native animal." Amphibians need to be able to move from the stream where they breed and to the adjacent hillside where they burrow. "They need to feed as they move around, and I don't know what food sources are left under there."

You can learn more about garden plants that threaten wildlands in these stories I reported for KPCC-FM.

AFTER THE FIRE: ANGELES FOREST

Southern California's chaparral is adapted to fire--or at least to natural cycles of fire. The progression of growth in an ecosystem is called succession. After a fire, with shrubs temporarily knocked back and more sunlight reaching the ground, annual wildflowers proliferate.

Indeed, several species are rare until a fire blows through and cues the seeds to germinate abundantly. I wrote about these fire-following flowers earlier this year for Chance of Rain. I hope you'll read the story.

I've been itching to see some fire-followers and other wildflowers, and check out how the Angeles Forest is regenerating in the wake of the Station Fire. So a couple weeks ago, I coaxed my 3-year-old into the car for a drive in the Angeles. Here's a slide show of what we saw, just from the road.

Thanks to Cliff McLean of the California Native Plant Society, San Gabriel Mountains Chapter for helping me identify the plants. I recommend his CD Field Guide, Common Plants of Eaton Canyon and The San Gabriel Foothills.

The flowers were beautiful, but I was troubled by some things I saw. First, despite many signs instructing people not to leave the road, people are hiking into the burn areas. Please know that if you do, you can tramp weed seeds from roadsides into not-yet infested areas.

The forest is especially vulnerable to weed colonization after a disturbance such as a fire. Weeds are no small matter; they can increase fire cycles to the point native plants can't recover. (Learn more about how human-caused fires threaten Southland ecosystems in my magazine story Sparking The Fires.)

You can see in a couple of the slides above that many weeds grow faster than native shrubs, allowing them to outcompete native plants.

The western stretch of Angeles Crest Highway (the La Canada entrance) is closed. You can access the Angeles through Big Tujunga Canyon, but the forest is closed to use, so stay on the road or face a $5,000 fine.

Click here for a larger version of the slideshow.

And check out this fun video about ecological succession:

Critical Habitat Expanded

This lovely and rare brodiaea (Brodiaea filifolia) was afforded additional protection this week when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expanded the acres designated as critical habitat for the endangered species. (This photo was taken by David Bramlet.) The flower only grows in isolated pockets of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and San Diego Counties.

Under the Bush administration, the agency had registered less than 600 acres as critical habitat for the species. Nearly 3,800 acres will now be official labeled as "essential to the conservation of the species."

“We’re glad the thread-leaved brodiaea will get more protection than the Bush government proposed, but we’re worried that the new proposal still fails to include 33 of the 69 locations of this very rare lily,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Also, this proposal wants to remove protection for 16 more locations.”

According to the Center, the flower is threatened by a combination of urban development, off-road vehicles, grazing, and plowing for fire clearance and agricultural conversion.

The critical habitat designation doesn't fully protect the flowers (a corm). According the Stanford Environmental Law Society (in it's 2001 publication The Endangered Species Act), critical habitat designation can affect private land, "but only to the extent that a future activity on that land is subject to federal permitting." And only uses that "destroy or adversely modify" the habitat are restricted. (Hence, much ensuing debate over what constitutes an "adverse modification.")

The designation has the greatest effect on public lands, where federal agencies, such as the US Forest Service, usually take some additional steps to protect the species.

Anderson says since the plant was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1998, entire populations have been extirpated, Anderson says. She adds the plant is still extremely vulnerable. “Anything but an expansion of final critical habitat is a recipe for extinction.”

The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned the agency to overturn or revise Bush-era decisions affecting more than 50 species.

Growing Population Threatens Southland Coast

In the next 30 years, southern California is expected to grow to a population of nearly 24 million. That will likely put increased pressure on the environment. Over 70 percent of Californians already live in coastal counties. The result has been a flood of pollution and trash flowing into the ocean. A couple years ago, in a story for KPCC-FM, I looked at how population growth might make it harder to protect the Pacific. (This is a transcript of the broadcast.)

SETZIOL: A few weeks ago, scientists and policy makers gathered in Long Beach to discuss the growing crisis in the oceans: overfishing, invasive species, power plants that kill fish larvae, and bacteria, nutrients and trash that wash off of streets. The list was long, and it all traced back to human activity.

UCLA ecologist Rich Ambrose studies southern California’s rocky inter-tidal habitat. He worries more people will mean more damage to tidepools.

AMBROSE: People are loving the rocky inter-tidal to death. Basically, there are so many people—already—with the population we have coming to visit the intertidal, walking through, turning over rocks. To see animals, picking up rocks, taking home as souvenirs having a major impact. It’s effecting sea slugs, star fish. It would effect abalone if we had any abalone left. …It’s affecting sea anemones, crabs, probably urchins, algae.

SETZIOL: Peter Douglas of the California Coastal Commission told the audience the environmental impact of future growth will depend largely on the type of development that occurs.

DOUGLAS: For the coast, it really turns on whether we will have the strength in terms of our laws and programs to require the concentration of development in areas that have the infrastructure to be able to accommodate it…I think the notion of a detached single family home, out in rural lands has got to be moved into our past, and not our future.

SETZIOL: It’s a bit of a counter-intuitive argument. Most of coastal southern California is already developed, and future growth is projected mostly for less developed areas in inland counties. But UCLA environmental economist Linwood Pendleton says that’s part of the problem.

PENDLETON: The watersheds for LA County and Southern California go all the way up to the mountains. So these people that are moving inland may be far from the beach, but the impacts of the things they do, the way they treat the land, things they drop on the ground. All affect the coasts, and beaches.

SETZIOL: And if people continue to commute long distances, that could create more pollution that washes off roads into storm drains or creeks, including heavy metals from break pads, and rubber from tires. Long commutes would also unleash additional carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that’s warming the oceans, and turning them more acidic.

Linwood Pendleton eats a crab cake dinner at King’s Fish House in Long Beach. He slurps down an appetizer. (sound of: slurp)

PENDLETON: That’s fabulous. We just had an oyster sampler plate. It includes oysters from New Zealand, Canada, and even Baja. But doesn’t include any oysters from southern California. Because water quality on the coast of California is just not up to growing oysters.

SETZIOL: Pendleton says people who live near a natural area tend to care more about protecting it.

PENDLETON: So the concern is as we have more and more people moving farther from the coast, but still in the watershed, there becomes a disconnect between their behavior and the impacts their behaviors have.

SETZIOL: Water quality officials have passed a fleet of regulations aimed at cleaning up the coast. Some cities—especially inland cities—have fought the regulations in court.

PENDLETON: We’re going to have to convince those people that they have to clean up their water quality because it affects these standards that are measured sometimes hundreds of miles away.

SETZIOL: Linwood Pendleton says that won’t be easy. Officials will have to educate more people about how their behavior affects the ocean.

In Long Beach, Ilsa Setziol, 89.3, KPCC

Eufloria

Southern California a Hotspot of Biodiversity

One of the things I most enjoy about reporting on the environment is learning about the natural world. To bend over a flower with a botanist who points out the nectar guide—a structure or marking some flowers have evolved to draw in pollinators. If you’re curious about local landscapes, check out these stories. Then you can impress friends with such offhand comments as, "Well, southern California IS one of only five places in the world with a Mediterranean climate.” You might want to have an idea what a Mediterranean climate is, so read on….

Our Mediterranean Plants

The modest shrubs and small plants that dominate our local natural landscapes may not look all that impressive when you whiz by on the road, but southern California is one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. In the first of two reports, KPCC’s Ilsa Setziol introduces us to some of the unique plants that have evolved in our uncommon climate.

(sound of creek)

SETZIOL: On a late spring morning in the Santa Monica Mountains, a small creek weaves through slanting sycamores and wispy-leaved willows. Nearby, botanist Phil Rundel strolls along a hillside dappled with wildflowers, twisted oaks, and delicate-flowered shrubs. He stops to point out a spurt of bluish purple blossoms.

RUNDEL: Those are delphiniums. There’s two native delphiniums….this one comes up in grasslands every year.
SETZIOL: It looks like the kind you find in the nursery, just with a slimmer stalk and smaller flowers--
RUNDEL: yeah, just a little less robust, ..probably one in nurseries are just bred from these.

SETZIOL: The delphinium, like many of our native plants, is only found in southwestern California.

(sound of bee buzz)

SETZIOL: Around the bend, a rotund black bee is sampling the tiered blooms of a white and magenta flower called Chinese Houses.

Rundel bends over a neighboring plant: an orange-flowered bush called Sticky Monkey flower.

RUNDEL: Bees and birds both pollinate that. Flowers like this you can see they’re really designed more for bees, though, because they have a landing strip… these markings on the lower lips of the flower are kind of like a landing strip for bees come in.

SETZIOL: Rundel is walking in UCLA’s 300-acre preserve called Stunt Ranch. It’s one of the places where he researches the world’s Mediterranean ecosystems. These are five areas of the planet that sit at about the same latitude and have similar climates: mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers. They are: of course, the actual Mediterranean basin; central Chile; the cape region of South Africa; southwestern Australia; and ….California—with the exception of our deserts. Rundel says conservation biologists have singled out these areas as crucial for preserving the world’s biodiversity.

RUNDEL: Only about 2 percent of the world has this kind of climate regime…it’s one that attracts a lot of us…but as a result, they’re some of the most threatened areas ecologically in the world because of population growth, urbanization, clearing of native habitats. We worry about rainforests and rainforests are clearly worth saving, but this 2% of the land area of Mediterranean climates has 20% of the plant species of the world.

SETZIOL: Botanist Phil Rundel says because the plants in these areas have evolved to survive in similar climates, many of them share similar traits: for example, California’s evergreen shrubs like Manzanita and Toyon resemble Mediterranean olive and strawberry trees.

RUNDEL: being an evergreen shrub with leathery leaves is a good solution to living in these environments and that’s what the dominant species are, particularly where water is limited. Their leaves don’t lose moisture very readily so they’re here all year round. In the summer they hunker down and if it’s cool they can start growing again.

SETZIOL: These plants take advantage of the mild climate, photosynthesizing year-round. And their tough leaves help them fend off herbivores … plant-eating animals. These shrubby, evergreen plant communities in southern California are called Chaparral. Our other Mediterranean shrub community—called sage scrub—is even rarer. About 80% of the coastal variety of sage scrub has been lost.

Because everybody loves living on the coast.

Ileene Anderson is a botanist with the California Native Plant Society.

ANDERSON: It’s made up of plants that usually have very small leaves. It’s often called soft chaparral because it’s smaller and easier to walk through than true chaparral. It’s also seasonal… loses its leaves during the summertime when resources are really limited…waiting out the drought, for fall rains to grow again.

SETZIOL: Anderson is hiking a section of the Verdugo Mountains, near Burbank, where sage scrub and Chaparral intermingle—the sage scrub dominating in the hotter, drier places. At the top of a steep hill, she’s greeted by a minty and lemony smell.

ANDERSON: (out of breath) This is black sage, salvia melifera…another key component of coastal sage scrub. Little petite purple flowers… the different sages have different smells. To me that is the classic California smell, it’s a pungent aromatic, wonderful scent…

SETZIOL: Nearby, a plant called wooly blue curls--because of the velvety bracts at the base of its chiffon-blue flowers—emits a perfume that mingles mint with hints of pine. Many plants from the Mediterranean basin—rosemary, lavender, thyme—are similarly aromatic. It’s a way plants in both places repel grazing animals; and makes them great companions in southern California gardens.

But some plants from the Mediterranean basin have become unwelcome guests here. They’ve taken up permanent residence and are threatening our native plant communities.

JON KEELEY I can easily picture in the next several decades southern California looking like the Kona coast of Hawaii, where you almost can’t find a native plant anywhere on that landscape.

SETZIOL: That’s our story tomorrow.

Ilsa Setziol, 89.3, KPCC.

Native Plants Threatened by Invaders, Fire

You can’t help but notice: whole canyons, entire hillsides that used to house communities of plants and animals are now budding with new homes for… humans. Less obvious, though, is another threat to our natural communities: innocuous looking foreign plants that—with human help—have the potential to radically change our rare ecosystems. KPCC’s Ilsa Setziol explains in our second report on southern California’s natural landscapes.

(Sound of bird)

SETZIOL: Stough Canyon in the Verdugo Mountains is a marvelous place to gaze at native plants. In a couple of hours of hiking on a May or June day, you can easily see about 100 species: 6-foot-tall scarlet delphiniums; caterpillar phacelia with curved, fuzzy purple heads; golden back ferns; holly leaf cherries; bright red members of the carnation family called “Indian pinks” …. and much more.

Botanist Ileene Anderson recently trekked up a fire road into the canyon. The hillsides were also covered with a deep pink flower that has four slender, diamond-shaped petals.

ANDERSON: This is an annual. It’s called elegant clarkia. It’s one of our later spring wildflowers, and it’s quite showy. These are 2-3 feet here but they can get substantially taller. They’re glorious, easy to grow in the garden, loved by a variety of insects, animals, etc.

SETZIOL: The tapestry of blooms exhilarates Anderson. But she also sees some plants she doesn’t welcome: she points at a gangly one with lemon-yellow flowers.

ANDERSON: This yellow mustard is of European origin and has spread to California. The story goes that when the Spanish were colonizing California they spread mustard seeds between the missions so they could find their way … by following El Camino Real, the mustard road. It’s done very well here, it’s suited to these conditions and has spread everywhere.

SETZIOL: The mustard is one of a suite of plants from the Mediterranean basin that has tagged along with people and livestock, and found our similar climate to be quite hospitable.

Alongside the fire road, Anderson points out other plants that are all-too-cozy in California:

ANDERSON: We see a patch up here of Mediterranean grasses of different sorts. And they have basically taken over all our native grasslands now. So native grasslands in California are a very rare plant community.

SETZIOL: UCLA botanist Phil Rundel says these alien plants—and others like the water-hogging, giant cane called arrundo—can do a lot of damage.

RUNDEL: Invasive species have dramatic potential to change fire frequencies, fire intensities, they can change nutrient levels, they can crowd out natives and change ecosystem function, change hydrologic flow in streams, a variety of impacts that have huge economic damage. Billions and billions of dollars in the US alone.

SETZIOL: One reason why some of these invaders do so well here in California is because the pathogens and predators they evolved with in their homeland are back there … not here.

Phil Rundel says some countries—places with similar climates, like South Africa—take aggressive steps to control invasives, essentially treating them like hazardous waste. But so far in California…

RUNDEL: There’s very little regulation. The state now has a few things they ask nurseries not to sell. There are state agencies that have lists of invasives we’re trying to control. Part of the problem is public education. People aren’t aware what’s dangerous and what’s not.

SETZIOL: Rundel says sometimes, alien plants don’t become invasive right away. They hang around benignly for several decades … then suddenly become aggressive - perhaps because the right pollinator or seed-disperser comes along to help them out.

The number of alien plants making their way to California is likely to climb as global trade and travel increases. But research scientist Jon Keeley of the U.S. Geological Survey says the plants that are already here are more than capable of wreaking havoc.

KEELEY: And the primary driver that affects that transition from native to non-native vegetation is fire…I see it just about every time I drive to southern California, I see a new portion of the landscape that seems to be on its way to being converted to alien grasslands, simply because as the urban development expands, we find that more and more fires are ignited at the most inopportune times for putting them out.

SETZIOL: Keeley says, yes, Southern California plant communities evolved with fire, but the shrub-dominated areas surrounding cities didn’t used to burn as frequently as they do now. Blame people for that.

KEELEY: If you put too many fires in the landscape, say for example two in five years, those plants don’t have enough time to recover … and as a result, alien species are able to invade and the reason they can invade is they’re a very different life form. The natives are a woody life form that takes a long time to recover, the alien plants are annuals that come in and can regenerate very, very quickly, produce seeds and withstand repeat fires.

SETZIOL: And that doesn’t bode well for all the animals that rely on native plants for food and shelter.

There’s a bit of good news in the face of this daunting problem: Jon Keeley of the USGS thinks federal land managers with the park and forest services are very aware of the problem .

Climbing up Stough Canyon, botanist Ileene Anderson arrives at a plateau thick with California buckwheats, blooming orbs of white flowers.

ANDERSON: The rain has definitely contributed to more blooms in general. This year, all the perennial shrubs have really benefited from the rain.

SETZIOL: But while the native plants thrive, their alien rivals - mustard, Mediterranean grasses and others - are also doing well … ready to take over when the next fire comes.

Ilsa Setziol, 89.3, KPCC.


Recommended Reading: Introduction to The Plant Life of Southern California: Coast to Foothills, Phillip Rundel and Robert Gustafson

Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan. This is not about local plants, but an interesting look at our relationship to four domesticated plants.