Things that Gall – plants and parasites

The word “galling” is particularly evocative.  In its most simple form something that galls is merely annoying or vexing, but the true definition connotes annoyance taken to an extreme level.  The sort of thing that will do you no harm but rankles tremendously; much like being forced to pay taxes to support actions you object to.

For us these annoyances are mental and emotional, for plants these galls are physical but are often merely annoyances for them as well.

Dried oak apple gall on Scrub oak in California

Many plants suffer from galls and the galls are so singular in form that they can be reliably used to identify individual parasite species.  A fantastic book on identifying plant galls for the California region is the Field Guide to Plant Galls of California and Other Western States.

Oak trees seem to be particularly susceptible to parasites of all sorts and a common manifestation is the Oak Apple Gall, most often seen as a hard, woody ball dangling from a twig.  These galls are created by the Oak Apple Gall Wasp, a common name for a variety of small wasps that inject their eggs into the midrib of a developing leaf and chemically trick the tree into growing a protective shell for the developing larvae.  Despite appearing woody when dried, this type of gall is actually a modified leaf.  The delicacy of these galls is more easily seen when they are still green.

Fresh Oak Apple Gall – Virginia

The developing wasps browse on the oak tissue and are often preyed upon or parasitized by other animals, including birds, raccoons, and a whole host of insects, other wasps included.  Some insects use the gall for their own protection, sharing the space with the wasp larvae.

Oak Apple Gall with non-wasp larva inside next to a Twig Gall – California

Certain Oak Apple Galls, the Iron Galls,  in Europe were collected to make ink.  For 1500 years ink make from the iron gall was the primary source of writing quality ink in the Western Hemisphere.  For anyone interested Evan Lindquest provides detailed instructions on how to make your own iron gall ink.

Like may things we have a long history with there is a great body of mythology and folk-lore that has accumulated around these galls.

Many galls are hard and woody, there is a Twig Gall I sliced in half in the photo above.  It appears to be empty, but a dark brown patch filled with frass (insect excrement) can be seen winding its way though the bloated tissue.

Oak Apple Galls often fall from the tree, but Twig Galls are a more permanent fixture of the tree.

Twig Gall on a scrub oak branch flowering from the tip – California

Right now the Scrub Oak is blooming along the coastal mountains in Southern California.  The twig galls are uniformly clustered near the tips of the branches, with many of them crowned by small clusters of flowers.  This provides a bit of insight into the formation of these and other galls.

The gall must be grown, and while the living plant cells are constantly dividing, the true growth of a woody plant takes place at the tips of the branches and roots, or at the apical meristem of each limb.  The cells in the apical meristem are undifferentiated,having the potential to become a wide variety of plant organs, much like stem cells in animals.  The parasite, be it a wasp, bacteria, or virus, co-opts these “stem” cells and gives them new instructions.  In a way the galls are akin to a tightly controlled cancer initiated by the parasite organism.

The Twig Galls I was looking at today were insect formed and, as such, the insect needs to escape the protective structure once it is mature.  Many of the galls had little holes in them showing where the little wasps has crawled out.

Exit holes in a Twig Gall – California

The variation in galls is astounding.  I have seen leaf galls on wild roses that look like tiny sea-urchins dipped in vermillion.  There are galls that not only force the plant to grow a protective structure around it, but that trick the plant into producing nectar to attract ants which in turn protect the growing larvae from predators.  Many are extremely colorful and the shapes are widely varied.

Colorful leaf galls on a Sugar Maple leaf – Vermont

The common theme is that the galls are all formed in developing tissue, leaves, new twigs, flowers, roots, or fruit.

A gall on Shadbush fruit – Vermont

Some of the Ichneumonidae wasps that make so many of the galls we see have developed a biological metallurgy, evolving zinc and manganese coated ovipositors which they use to inject chemicals and hormones into the plants they co-opt.

The specificity and regularity of the galls and the relationships between the plants and the gall formers speaks to a lengthy and complicated evolutionary history.

We pride ourselves (or are horrified by) our newly found ability to genetically manipulate plants and animals.  In truth, we have a long way to go before we catch up to what we often mistakenly call the “humble” insects.

A Long Flight over the Canadian Shield

Recently I flew from Istanbul to Los Angeles, following a great-circle route over Ukraine, Norway, Greenland, and Northern Canada.  As I always do when flying, I got a window seat and spent most of the flight peering out the window, developing a crick in my neck that took several days to loosen.

Much of the European and Greenland portions of the flight were shrouded in clouds, leaving me watching a vast expanse of what looked like glowing cotton.  Occasionally patches would open in the clouds and I would catch a brief glimpse of the land or sea below, and a look at one of the most talked about ecosystems on our planet.

Ice floes on the Arctic Ocean

The northern polar region, the Arctic.  This is a vast region centered on the bath-tub-like basin of the Arctic Ocean.  Discussing directions in the polar regions is tricky, for in the arctic, pretty much every direction that is not north is south, thus geography is a better indication of location than compass points.  On one side the entryway to the Arctic Ocean is narrow, shallow, and flows over the ancient land-bridge that once connected North America and Asia.  On the other side warm water flows up the Atlantic Ocean to the east of Greenland, keeping Europe warm and pushing the ice away from the Norwegian coast.  This is the primary point of water-flow into the Arctic Ocean.

To the west of Greenland a network of channels in the Queen Elizabeth Islands lets water slowly filter out of the basin, trickling back into the Atlantic via the southern opening of Baffin Bay.  Amongst the islands fierce currents keep polynyas open in the ice, providing open water for eider ducks and other sea-birds that over-winter in the Arctic.  Generally the whales will leave the Arctic during winter, but sometimes they become trapped and these polynyas provide the only places they can find air to breath.

Since we have been keeping records the sea ice extent has been getting smaller and smaller.  Records of sea ice extent and other cold-weather data can be found free of charge at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Several years ago, as part of a graduate project on Ringed Seals I looked at the changes in ice extent for the month of April over the last 30 years.  The photo of the broken sea ice above was taken on the eastern side of Greenland, a place where the sea-ice is extremely variable.

1981 – 2010 April Sea Ice Extent: Darker colors indicate a greater number of years of coverage, lighter colors, fewer years of coverage – green indicates areas outside of ice-cover that are shallow enough to provide foraging areas for Ringed Seals

The little flashes of ice I got to see through the grubby Turkish Airlines plane window were tantalizing, but they were only teases.  The interesting views were to come later, as we passed over the Canadian Shield.

Flying over over the Melville Peninsula, looking east to Foxe Basin… I think

Here, over the Canadian Shield, a 3 million square mile (8 million square kilometer) expanse of heavily weathered, exposed bedrock billions of years old the signs of past glaciation are evident.  Not merely evident, the fossil tracks of vast continental glaciers shout their presence to the sky.  Fortunately, I happened to be in the sky, with a camera at the ready.

There is a common misconception about glaciers.  People have heard that glaciers carve channels into the bedrock and grind down mountains.  This is only partially true.  Ice is not very hard, by itself ice can carve channels into rock the hardness of chalk or talc, but not into tough rocks like granite, the rock much of the Canadian Shield is composed of.  Ice levers out whole boulders and picks up loose material where it lies.  These become embedded in the ice and these are what does the scouring and carving.  The ice provides the weight and movement, much like a person provides the force when sanding or filing a piece of wood or metal, but it is the sandpaper or the file that does the actual cutting.

Ice, when it comes in glacier quantities, is an elasto-plastic material.  The upper surfaces are brittle and crack, making crevasses and seracs, but the deeper ice, down below the 50 meter mark, is more akin to a slow, cold silly-putty than to the brittle thing we put in lemonade.  When the ice is kilometers deep it oozes, flowing like spilled molasses over the land, dragging with it the entrained materials, grinding down high points, smoothing jagged surfaces, and hollowing out U-shaped valleys, leaving behind a stream-lined surface replete with the marks of its passage.

Rocky Mountain Trench in the Canadian Rockies – a classic glacially carved valley

In both photos above the U-shaped valleys are clear.  These valleys come in all sizes, some more impressive than others.  The Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia is one of the more impressive ones, as is the Gilkey Trench in South-East Alaska.

The Gilkey Trench, the speck in the foreground is a person and each of the ripples in the bottom is 10 meters high

These valleys are often found in mountains, places where the glaciers ground out material between the peaks, but left the high places alone.

Billions of years ago the Canadian Shield used to be home to vast mountains, now they are all gone, only their roots remain.  Erosion from various sources and repeated glaciations have scoured the Canadian Shield over and over again, grinding even the great mountains into low mounds, leaving traces that are best seen from the air.

Exposed bedrock showing fault-lines and ancient mountain cores

The long, straight lines are old fault lines, places where geologic stresses broke the rock and let it slide against itself.  Here the rock is already damaged and the glaciers excavated long channels that look like canals from the air.  The distorted oval in the lower middle of the photo is where a bubble of rock forced its way up in the distant past, creating a mountain or large hill.  Now it has been ground flat and shows up in the surface pattern, much like cut wood shows the pattern of knots and grain despite being smooth to the touch.

Over much of the Canadian Shield soils are shallow to non-existent.  Even south of the tree-line vast areas are sparsely vegetated for lack of soil.  Roads are difficult to make as the land is smooth only at large scale and it is riddled with lakes and rivers.

In the winter the smoothest parts of the Canadian Shield are the lakes themselves and they are where temporary roads are made.

A road on the frozen lakes to the north of Yellowknife

The last major glaciation was relatively recent, only about 20,000 years ago and the land is still recovering from the effects.  The whole Canadian Shield is undergoing isostatic rebound; with the weight of the up to 3 miles (almost 5 kilometers) of ice coming off the Earth’s crust it is now rising, seeking a new equilibrium as it floats on the liquid rock mantle deep beneath the surface.  Rivers and lakes are draining, the courses sometimes shifting as the land rises, carving out new pathways.  Water, like the ice it came from, does not do the work of carving the rock, it is the sediment it carries, but the Canadian Shield is made of hard stuff and it takes time to carve new channels in this durable granite.

Meandering rivers in glacial sediment

Further south, the land is still flat, but has been overlain by a layer of sediment, left behind as the glaciers retreated.  Here rivers carve into the land more easily, looping back and forth and pinching off sections of themselves.  These oxbow lakes and the irregular rocky ones to the north are home to untold numbers of mosquitoes and other insects with aquatic life-phases.  These insects, when they emerge, lure birds from as far away as the southern hemisphere, and the mosquitoes become the bane of any humans wandering in the vastness of northern Canada during the warm season.  These insects, both adult and larval provide feed for numerous fish, making this an excellent place for fishing.  The first time my family and I drove to Alaska much of our food was from fish we caught each evening after only a few minutes with a line in the water.

The glaciers that covered the Canadian Shield were continental in scale.  There are only a few places where vast sheets of ice like that remain, but many places (for now) where small alpine glaciers are present, and even more places where signs of past glaciation are common.

One of the most famous of the post-glacial relics is Half Dome in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

Half Dome

The last interesting views I had out the window of my plane were of Half Dome, or Tis-sa-ack in the local native language.  This sheer rock-face is a batholith, a granite upwelling often making the core of a mountain.  Despite its appearance, Half Dome was not split in half, it seems to have formed more or less in the shape it has now.  Glaciers have smoothed and rounded the upper surface and carved out the characteristic U-shaped valley below though.

Glaciers have had a far larger impact on the world than most people realize.  Humans reached Australia some 60,000 years ago, able to walk over-land all the way to where Bali is now, needing boats only for a short stretch from Bali to Lubok.  Fifteen thousand years ago people walked from Siberia to Alaska over a broad grassy plain when the sea level was some 300 feet (91 meters) lower than today as a result of the water locked up in the ice.

When Greenland and Antarctica melt (which they will eventually do with or without our presence, the only difference is when it happens) sea level will rise by some 200 feet (67 meters) above present day levels.  At the moment there is a lot of talk of halting climate change via geo-engineering projects.  This is talk that completely and painfully misses the point.

The climate is a dynamic system, one that experiences wide changes over long periods of time, with the changes sometimes happening rapidly.  Yes, we desperately need to stop messing with the climate by releasing fossil CO2, methane, CFCs, and all the other greenhouse gasses we pump into the atmosphere with such abandon.  We are pushing the natural changes hard, forcing them to be of greater magnitude and to happen faster than they would otherwise.  We need to stop this, but what we do not need to and should not do is compound our mistakes by dumping iron into the oceans, pumping sulfur into the upper atmosphere, or place orbiting mirrors in space to deflect sunlight in a misguided attempt to keep the climate the way it was during the early 1900s.

We are driven by our economic system to keep things in some idealized stasis based on the time when we built our current infrastructure.  We may want things to stay static, but the earth is dynamic and fluid.  In our short-sighted, profit driven efforts to “save” our political and economic systems we will destroy the very thing that those systems and our societies are based on.

Seeing the earth from new perspectives and thinking about what we see tells us about the world is important.  We are on a cusp, we are standing on the edge of our metaphorical Half Dome.  We can tumble off the steep edge with disastrous consequences, or we can ease our way back down the slightly less steep slope, and once more enjoy the rich valley floor below.

Spring comes to Madrid

Spring is lurching its way through the Northern Hemisphere.  In Madrid this year this means more rain than has fallen since the 1940s, usually in a soft drizzle, occasionally spiced with small hail, bouts of hard rain, and periods of epic cloudscapes accompanied by bright sun.  It is familiar weather, reminding me of the part of California I grew up in.

In the countryside the effects of all this water are obvious, the land turns green.  This is likely to be a good year for farmers and wildflowers, though the former have a globally recognized habit of finding something to complain about no matter the weather.  For the wild plants this may mean bountiful seeds next year and the possibility of mast fruiting for woody plants that do that sort of thing (oak trees, I’m looking at you).

Within the boundaries of Madrid, where I have been living recently, the setting is considerably more urban.

The early evening view from a Madrid apartment

In this landscape of stone, cement, and brick the effects of spring are more subtle and easy to overlook; they are most clearly seen in the length and material of coats worn by pedestrians.  Long black wool overcoats are being replaced by short black wool overcoats, leather jackets are replacing down, and on the few warmer days some of the women wear skirts with tights and accompanied by peculiar choices in footwear.

Nature-wise the heralds of spring are the street trees which are beginning to leaf out (especially the elms); ornamental cherries, plums, and almonds have been blooming, and, most interestingly to me, the little plants that have adapted to city life are beginning to show signs of life.

Leaves of an elm seedling

On the patio there is a planter box that has been left to what wild nature resides in the city.  A small elm has taken root and shows nice bonsai potential.  Accompanying the elm are, moss, English Ivy (planted), a few tender oxalis plants, and a small climbing vine with miniscule, but lovely, flowers; purple and white, kissed with egg-yolk yellow.

Leaves and flowers of our mystery plant – the flowers are perhaps half a centimeter across and at most a centimeter long

This plant starts out in a tight cluster and flowers prolifically when conditions are right.

A tangled clump of Ivy-leaved Toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis)

This little plant, Ivy-leaved Toadfax (Cymbalaria muralis) is evergreen and originally native to the Mediterranean region, now found nearly globally, having been introduced both intentionally and inadvertently. The flowers betray the family association; snapdragons or Scrophulariaceae.

Cymbalaria muralis does not suffer from a lack of names, Coliseum-Ivy , Kenilworth-Ivy, Wandering-Sailor, Mother-Of-Thousands, Oxford-Ivy, Pennywort, and Ivy-leaved Toadflax being just a few of its common names.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax prefers calcareous soils and often grows directly from cliffs and older walls.  Here in Spain it is a native plant and is as much in balance with its environment as any other plant is in a land so heavily used by humans for so long as the Iberian Peninsula has been.  Elsewhere this small plant becomes aggressively invasive and can rapidly form a dense blanket of vegetation over trees, cliffs, and buildings.  It is a popular plant for rock gardens.

If a plant could be described as being clever, this plant might qualify for the compliment.  It sends runners out in all directions, with most of the ones I have seen pointing upwards.

Ivy-Leaved Toadflax climbing a trellis

On a healthy plant these runners can be nearly a meter long and have a fleshy, almost succulent aspect.  The leaves and the vines are slightly waxy and smooth to the touch, helping to limit water loss.  As it grows, Ivy-leaved Toadflax builds up a dense, nearly light impenetrable, layer of overlapping leaves.  Like a forest, this little clump of shade helps to trap both moisture and organic matter.  This little reservoir of nutrients feeds the ever growing plant.

The most interesting aspect of this plant is its behavior when it flowers and sets seed.  The flowers are pollinated primarily by bees and must be placed where the bees can find and land on them.  To ensure this the young flowerbuds are positively phototrophic; they actively seek out the brightest light.

Cymbalaria muralis flowers growing towards the light

Bees can see into the ultraviolet and to them flowers look very different than to us.  I am very curious how these flowers look to the bees.

Once the flower has been pollinated a change takes place and the forming seedpods become negatively phototrophic actively avoiding light.  The change can be quite dramatic and rapid

A fertilized bud moving away from the light

Avoidance of light sends the forming seeds into the darkest places within reach, places where it is more likely to find a safe, damp spot for the small seeds to be deposited.

Light and dark seeking stems

This clever approach to seed distribution combined with rooting from runners and re-rooting from broken clumps serve the Ivy-leaved Toadflax well.  This change in light preference is not unique to Ivy-leaved Toadflax, the common houseplant Monstera deliciosa (aka Swiss Cheese Plant, Window Leaf, Mexican Breafdruit, and many more names) begins life avoiding light, then, when it finds a tree trunk its preference turns towards light as it climbs to the near canopy.

We don’t often talk about the behavior of plants, we usually use more neutral terms such as survival strategy.  To us plants are fixed in the landscape with their changes slow.  Plants lack of a brain makes discussion of behavior problematic.  We often fail to have an appreciation for the senses plants posses and they way their response to stimulus drives their growth and adaptability.  We have a prejudice for organisms with a central nervous system, or at least some form of mobility, because they are more similar to ourselves and we find them easier to empathize with.

The little Cymbalaria muralis is far from the only plant in flower right now in Madrid.  In the parks Common Fumitory (aka. Earth Smoke), Fumaria officinalis, is blooming.

Common Fumitory, Earth Smoke (Fumaria officinalis) flowers

Common Fumitory is in the Bleeding Heart family, related to Corydalis, Bleeding Hearts, and Squirrel Corn.  Often this pretty little plant is lumped into a sub-family of the Poppy family (Papaveraceae).

In some places small fields of Red Campion (Silene dioica) dance in the breeze, making rippling patches of purple-tinged pink.

Red Campion (Silene dioica)

In the countryside ground dwelling orchids are beginning to bloom, but I have not seen those yet.

Perhaps soon.

Into the forest at Lubuk Baji – Part 2: Monkeys and Apes

The real temperature was not so great, perhaps 83°F (28°C), but the humidity and the still air in the forest made it seem hotter.  I took large, slow strides, my toes instinctively trying to grip the slippery, steep slope through my sandals, my sleeves rolled down to keep the constant flow of sweat from dripping down my arms onto my camera bag.  A bandanna looped around my neck served as a towel to mop sweat from my face, sweat that stung my eyes, sweat that was so prodigious that it felt like the inside of my mouth was sweating.

Bird calls, the occasional ululating call of a gibbon, and the clicks and whirrs of numerous insects surrounded us.  Despite the fecund richness of the forest around us the only animal life to be seen were insects, most obviously large butterflies, predominately black in color, some with large yellow patches, others with cerulean blue patches, many with white polka-dots scattered over their wings.  In the warm air they rarely stood still, preferring to dance in the solitary shafts of sunlight and flit erratically through the trees.

Large butterflies were common in the forest, many about the size of an open hand

On the forest floor, amongst the leaf litter crawled the occasional giant woodlouse, relatives of common pillbug but far larger.  They would curl at the slightest provocation, looking like painted ping-pong balls.

Giant woodlouse curled up on the forest floor

We were looking for wild orangutan in the hills of Lubuk Baji.  We knew they were in the area, abandoned sleeping nests in the trees and their pungent scent attested to their recent presence but they remained hidden in the forest.

Lubik Baji is a small hill on the west side of Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.  This large park is one of the last remaining protected lowland forests and contains nearly 10% of the world’s remaining orangutan.  The nearby town of Sukadana is partially surrounded by the park and a large number of people live nearby, many of them relying on resources found within the park for their livelihoods, especially timber resources.

Gunung Palung NP wraps around Sukadana, to the east is a small hill names Lubuk Baji

We had seemingly missed our chance to see these large forest dwelling primates, perhaps arriving too late in the day.  Our guide kept a close eye out and several times pulled us off  the trail through small tangles of spiky rattan palm to follow up on potential sightings and sounds.  Each turned out to be a false alarm.

Wandering off the trail brought its own rewards though.

Large ground orchid in the Borneo rainforest

Where the ground was a bit more damp large white ground orchids grew, the broad, soft leaves looking more lilly-like than orchid like.

Unknown red & blue fruit (if you know, please let me know).  Each blue fruit was only about 1 to 1.5cm long.  EDIT: possibly Baccaurea odoratissima

The tree above was fruiting directly from the trunk.  This is a trait called cauliflory.  Plants that exhibit cauliflory flower and fruit directly from their stems and trunks.  It is relatively common in tropical environments and rare to non-existent elsewhere.  I have seen it on many plants in the Amazon, but the fruit growing in this manner that most people will be familiar with is papaya.  I think it is one of the most striking and beautiful ways for a tree to flower, in part because it is so unexpected.

I have heard several hypotheses for why tropical trees do this; one has to do with sun protection for delicate flowers and fruits.  Tropical sun is intense and the trees may be protecting their fruits under a dark canopy.  Another thought is that it makes the fruit easier for large animals to reach as they do not have to rick precarious trips onto thin branches that may not hold their weight.  One side effect of this growth form is that trees can produce fruits of immense size.  Jackfruit (Artocarpus spp), a delicious fruit of which there are many species, produces some of the largest fruits of any tree, the largest fruits weighing up to 80 pounds (36 kilos).

Failing to see any wild primates we continued our hike along the ridge to an overlook of bare granite shaded by a grove of tall bamboo.

Looking East-Northeast over Gunung Palung National Park and parts north from the Sukadana Hills

From here we finally got an overview of the surrounding countryside.  Views like this can be surprisingly rare in forested lands, even when there are hills and mountains.  Below us rice paddies infringed on the edge of the national park, then faded into a shaggy carpet of greenery.  Here and there eskers of logging tracks could be seen following stream courses and through binoculars it was clear that all the tall trees had been cleared from the lower slopes of the distant hills.

We sat enjoying the breeze and view for a time, then headed back to the stream and park building for lunch.

I grew restless and maybe 15 minutes before we were to set out I told the guide that I would go first and wait for the rest of the group later on.  Walking in nature in large groups always bothers me a bit, too many people talk too loudly, make too much noise moving through the forest, and scare off the wildlife.  I tend to walk slowly and quietly with frequent pauses to listen, look, and smell the air.

As it has so many times in the past my slow approach to nature paid off in spades.  Just downhill from the honey gathering tree I saw a large branch move across the stream and head a loud rustle, clearly not from the wind.  I froze and waited, watching the closely.  Large dark shapes clambered about, difficult to see, sometimes in deep shade, other times so strongly backlit by the sun that all I could see was a dark blob.

I waited with my camera out.  After a few minutes of quiet waiting the orangutan began moving about, foraging and breaking off large dead limbs.  I waited until they seemed accustomed to my presence, then slipped back up the trail to wait for the rest of my hiking group.  Five minutes later they came down the trail, talking and breaking dead branches on the ground.  “Shhh, tiga orangutan,” I said holding up 3 fingers.  Everyone fell silent and we crept down the hill.

The orangutan watched us for a few minutes, then returned to foraging.  One adolescent clambered directly over us, occasionally peering down through the sheltering leaves, then moving on again.

Very curious adolescent Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

Most of my photos did not turn out well, the contrast was too great and the apes moved too quickly.  After much post processing one image revealed that there were at least 4 orangutan, possibly more nearby.

After about 20 minutes we continued on our way down the hill, pausing to swim in a deliciously refreshing pool at the base of a waterfall.

The trail was paralleled by a series of lovely waterfalls

Regretfully donning our clothes once more we continued our hike out of the forest, happy at seeing the orangutan and thinking that out wildlife sights were at an end.

Just inside the margin of the forest we found that we were unexpectedly and happily wrong.

Red leaf Monkey (Presbytis rubicunda), aka Maroon Leaf Monkey

Several Red Leaf Monkeys were foraging for fruit in the semi-wild durian orchard.  They made long, graceful leaps between the trees, their tails streaming out behind them, accenting the arc of their flight.

People often think we need to protect the forest in order to protect species like the orangutan, various monkey species, birds, and other forest inhabitants.  While this is indeed true, it is only part of the picture.  The forest denizens must be protected as well because without them the forest changes, sometimes radically, becoming a completely different environment.

Many species of plants require their seeds to be consumed along with their fruit and carried far off as part of their dispersal strategy.  Many seeds must pass through the digestive tracts of specific animals before they will germinate.  The extinction of one animal species can have repercussions that are slow to manifest, are difficult to reverse, and may have a wider impact through the ecosystem.

We often talk of specific species as being keystone species.  It may be wiser to think of all species as being keystone species.

Red Leaf Monkey watching me

Into the forest at Lubuk Baji – Part 1: Hikes and Honey

The small Indonesian town of Sukadana, where I was to be living and working, is surrounded by Gunung Palung National Forest on a bit more than 3 sides and the ocean on the fourth.  The town rests in a small valley, and like many of the towns I saw in Borneo, it sits in the middle of what was once a mangrove estuary.

The hills surrounding the town are within the national park and supply the water that fills the estuary and the water that provides drinking water to the local population.

Gunung Palung NP wraps around Sukadana, to the east is a small hill named Lubuk Baji

The harbor sits at the mouth of the estuary and had been cleared and hard-banked to support buildings and boats.

Sukadana Harbor

Like many such places there is tension concerning how to manage the local environmental resources, some want the hills taken out of the national park system so that they can be logged, others realize their value in maintaining the water table and wish to keep them protected in some fashion, others have different concerns.  Concerns focused more on biodiversity, especially of the large, rare local primates and of the incredible diversity of plants, insects, and animals in the region.

In general, the hills surrounding Sukadana are simply called the Sukadana Hills, but, as in most places, each place has a particular and specific name as well.  To the east of the town is a larger hill called Lubuk Baji.

The road there is narrow and bumpy, a raised affair passing between the numerous “wallet” houses, large buildings put up to house formerly cave dwelling swifts, the nests of which are harvested for bird’s nest soup.  The road passes through wet-rice fields and finally comes to an abrupt termination at a partially collapsed (or unfinished) brick building next to a shallow dam that keeps the flow of water from the hills to a judiciously controlled amount.  Behind the dam rice fields and coconut trees rest a the base of the Lubuk Baji hills.

Below the hills of Lubuk Baji lie coconut palms, rice paddies, and a small dam

The at the base of the hills surrounding Sukadana are groves of partially domesticated durian trees that we had heard the orangutan were visiting in search of the strong smelling ripe fruit.  For those of you who have never had durian, this is a large spiky fruit that a pungent odor that some liken to old socks and others to rich, sweet cream.  The texture of the fruit is like stringy custard and the flavor varies from person to person, ranging from a deep, lemony custard to green onions, to sweat soaked T-shirt armpit.  Those who like the fruit love it, and those who dislike it tend to hate it.  I am one of the few people who falls in the middle ground, to me the fruit is tasty, the texture and smell inoffensive, but I can’t see why such a big deal is made of it when there are fruits like mangosteen in the area.

Eating fresh, semi-wild durian in the Indonesian rainforest

The hike up to the top of Lubuk Baji was not difficult, though it was hot, humid, and steep.  At times we could smell orangutan, we found edible fruit dropped by these large primates, and several times we spotted their broken branch sleeping nests high above us in the canopy, but we did not see any orangutan.

There were a variety of interesting things to see other than primates along the way.

One of the most interesting to me was the remains of a honey harvesting operation.  The bees in this part of the world are large and make big, exposed honeycombs.  The heat is so great that the wax is in danger of melting, so the place the hives high in the trees hanging from the bottom of large branches where there is a breeze and they are sheltered from the sun.  The bees stand on the exposed comb and fan air over the wax with their wings when extra cooling in necessary.  The bees are usually fierce enough to chase away any animals seeking their honey, but humans have a particular love of sweet things and harvest the honey when they can.

This is a dangerous process as the bees pick only certain mature tree species.  These special trees are carefully protected by the humans and climbed when the honey is ready to harvest.  The hive may be 150 feet (30 meters) or more above the ground and the trunks of these trees are smooth and unbranched until the canopy.

Bamboo ladder hammered into the tree rising more than 50 meters into the canopy

Bamboo stakes are pounded into the tree and a set of bamboo canes is tied to the stakes with rattan strips, making a narrow and dangerous ladder to the canopy.  The lumps in on the tree in the photo are scars from a previous ladder put up perhaps 40 or more years ago.

At the top of the ladder the branches spread and the remains of old honeycomb can be seen clinging to the bottom of the branches from which it was harvested.

The remains of the honeycomb look like yellow stains on the bottom of the branches.  To the right the bees are building a new hive.

I was tempted to try climbing the ladder, but it seemed like a bad idea… no safety gear, uncertain footing, and a long climb up.  The people who climb up to harvest the honey must cope with those problems while being attacked by angry bees, carrying baskets and harvesting poles, and breathing smoke from fires lit below, the smoke of which is supposed to help confuse and stupefy the bees.

On the ground was an old piece of honeycomb, long since emptied of the tasty honey.

Old honeycomb, about 1 foot long (30 cm) long the long axis

Coming up: Part 2 – seeing apes and monkeys in the forest.

Pontianak to Sukadana: through the mangroves at high speed

It has been a while since I’ve written a new post.  Quite a bit has happened in the last few weeks, the key bit being that the position in Borneo has fallen apart on me unexpectedly shortly after arriving in Indonesia.

Despite the unexpected disappointment there was a lot to see and experience.  I last left off in Pontianak, a rough and tumble Indonesian city in West Kalimatan, a hardy workman’s city perched on the borders of one of the largest rivers in Borneo.  The name, Pontianak, refers to a specific type of vampire, a woman who died in childbirth, a somewhat strange thing to name a city after.

Boats and buildings line the riverside in Pontianak

To get from Pontianak to Sukadana one may either take a round-about bus that runs over poorly maintained roads and may not make it during the rainy season, or a boat that races through broad channels in the mangrove swamp.  The slow boat takes more than a day and the speedboat takes between 5 and 6 hours, more if either of the two massive outboard engines are damaged by the numerous floating logs in the water or fouled by vegetation, old fishing nets, or garbage.

Speedboat returning to Pontianak from Sukadana

I had been expecting the boat to head out into the ocean and run down the coast.  I was pleasantly surprised that the route ran along the interior channels of the Kapuas River delta  instead.

Inland route from Pontianak to Sukadana. Roughly 130-140 miles along the winding channels through the mangrove forest

Mangroves are one of the most mysterious and interesting ecosystems to me, perhaps because I have spent so little time in them and because there are so few intact mangrove forests left in the world.  In terms of carbon sequestration mangroves are one of the most effective ecosystems for carbon storage.  Mangroves are the nursery for many species of fish and crustaceans, and protect coastal areas from storm surges and tsunamis.

The center for diversity of mangroves is in South East Asia where there are some 40 or so tree species from a variety of families that all have adopted the “mangrove” lifestyle.  Trees falling into the general category of mangroves share a number of features despite coming from different families; some form of air-breathing apparatus on the roots (stilts, knees, aerial roots, root spikes that lift above the mud, etc), high tolerance to salt, and floating fruits/seeds.

One of the more interesting plants in the mangrove forest is the Nipa Palm (Nypa fruticans).

Nipa Palms (Nypa fruticans) growing along the banks of the river delta

This palm is unusual in several ways.  It often grows in areas where the trunk is completely submerged for long periods, making me wonder how it establishes itself in the first place.  This in and of itself is only mildly remarkable, what is truly odd is that the trunk is horizontal, growing underground, parallel to the surface, with all the greenery visible comprised of individual fronds acting as mini-trees growing from a single stalk.  In some ways the growth habit of this palm is more like that of a fern than a palm.

The fruits form in a large round mass, a little bigger than a basketball, divided into fist-sized floating seeds that break off and float away, sometimes germinating while still afloat.  The flower stalks are rich in sugar and this is one of the palms used to make palm sugar, a laborious process akin to making maple sugar, but limited to collecting sap from the flower stalks rather than tapping the tree.  Some studies indicate that this palm has a promising potential for biofuel production, but the process of cultivating or collecting enough to make this feasible would spell ecological devastation for immense regions of sensitive and already threatened habitat.

Mangrove forests are one of the most imperiled and under appreciated ecosystems in the world.  They are limited to tropical and near tropical regions.

Mangrove forest distribution from Charter Science

Many of the great tropical fisheries of the world owe their existence to mangrove forests; they provide nursery grounds for many aquatic species.  When mangrove forests are cleared to make room for development or for the shrimp farms that feed the developed nation’s voracious consumption of shrimp and prawns, these fish nurseries wither away, taking with them the tropical fisheries hundreds of millions of people rely on for their primary source of dietary protein.

Mangrove forests are found in low-lying, flat areas, areas subject to immense tidal run-ups, storm surges, and, in earthquake prone regions, areas where tsunamis can travel great distances inland.  The presence of mangroves acts as a buffer to these great movements of water, protecting both inland environments and human settlements.

In Southeast Asia the mangrove forests themselves provide a number of immediate resources for local people, including food, building supplies, medicines, and protected navigable waterways.

Local fellow collecting vegetation from the mangrove forest

As in all areas people must make a living.  For some the only option is land clearing, whether for agriculture or timber.  In the Indonesian mangrove forests land is cleared for rice agriculture, aquaculture, and logging, primarily illegal.  Logging in this area is an enormous problem.  Large rafts of logs are often seen moored on the banks of the rivers and small-scale loggers carry short logs to local mills.

A small two person logging operation bringing palm logs home

A larger logging operation bringing intermediate sized hardwood logs into the mill

People fishing from a large raft of hardwood logs floated down from the interior forests

Nearly all the current logging in Indonesia is illegal.  The legal logging concessions have been cleared, in many cases converted to palm oil agriculture.  New land is legally cleared for palm oil, but current regulations prohibit the felled wood from being sold, thus this wood is often destroyed, resulting in an increased spread of illegal logging.

It is a cycle difficult to break.

In these areas dry land is a rare commodity and whole villages rest on stilts rising over the rivers and soggy ground.  Boats and motorcycles are the primary methods of transport, motorcycles being driven over narrow plank walkways with a casualness that makes the uninitiated cringe and wonder how many motorcycles lie in the mud at the bottom of the river.

Midday conversation on a stilt-village

The trip from Pontianak to Sukadana took a little more than 5 hours, an exhilarating 5 hours spent zipping through wide channels amongst one of the more interesting and briefly glimpsed ecosystems it has been my privilege to view first-hand.  I desperately want to go back to a diverse mangrove forest and spend months at a time clambering about, exploring and learning how it functions, but that will now have to wait until some undefined time in the future.

For this job in Indonesia I sold many of my things, put the rest in storage, spent a lot of money I would not have otherwise spent, and tossed my life in the blender with the assurance that the next step on my career path was well and firmly in hand.  Instead of an interesting and tasty life-shake emerging from the blender, the blender was casually and abruptly knocked off the counter, leaving my plans and work spread across the metaphorical floor in a sticky mess from which I am now attempting to salvage what I can.

Back to the job hunt, back to evaluating my life choices, back to laughing at the impracticality of my dreams.

Despite all, I had an opportunity few ever have and was able to see things most never even think about.  For that I am grateful.

Make the jump, take the risk.  If you make that leap you don’t know where you will land, but if you don’t nothing interesting will ever happen.

Brown Pelicans: today’s Pterosaurs

I am a big fan of Pelicans. They may be my favorite birds, though claiming anything to be a favorite is a little silly. I like all pelicans, but it is the Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) and its cousin the Peruvian Pelican (Pelecanus thagus) that are at the top of my pelican list.

Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) banking away from a landing at Point Dume, in Malibu

The Brown Pelican is the smallest of the 8 species of pelican in the world. Small is a relative term when it comes to pelicans, the Brown Pelican weighs up to 12 pounds (5.4kg) and has a wingspan up to a little more than 8 feet (2.4 meters). It and the Peruvian Pelican, which is nearly twice the size of the Brown Pelican, have a hunting strategy that differs from all other pelicans and one that is great fun to watch.

Pelicans are extremely successful apex predators. Their primary hunting tool, their beaks, have remained relatively unchanged for 30 million years as evidenced by a remarkably intact fossil from southern France. Pelicans have the largest beaks of any bird, a long affair with a sharp hook at the end and a large pouch underneath. Like baleen whales pelicans gulp huge mouthfuls of water and food (fish for pelicans) and strain the food from the water. Most pelicans do their fishing from the surface of the water, floating along like immense ducks, dipping their heads into schools of fish to grab a meal.

Brown Pelicans have an entirely different strategy.

Brown Pelican diving for fish. View the full-size image to see panicked fish leaping clear of the water to escape the pelican

Pelicans can see through the water well enough to spot fish near the surface. Brown and Peruvian pelicans hunt from the air in a delightfully cavalier fashion. When they spot a school of fish they dive for them, but this is not the elegant, dagger like dive of the gannet, this is the lumbering crash of a falling boulder. They fold their wings and plummet from the sky, more-or-less beak first, impacting with a great explosion of water. Their version of a dive is more akin to a drunken stumble into the pool than it is the clean Olympian dive. Despite the seeming lack of grace, their hunting strategy is effective.

While the dive of a pelican exhibits a singular lack of grace, they are elegant precision flyers. Pelicans of all species are probably best known for their surface skimming flight.

Brown Pelicans skimming the water – the lead pelican does not seem hindered by the loss of an eye

Being large, heavy birds (the largest species of pelicans weigh upwards of 20 pounds), pelicans use as little energy as possible when flying. We see them most often flying low over the water, wings nearly touching the surface of the ocean. The weight of their bodies compresses the air underneath them, making it more dense. As a result the air provides more lift, in effect they are riding on their own cushion of air. We make vehicles that do this, hover craft, and far more impressively, the Soviet ekranoplan vehicles.

Pelicans are adept surfers, riding the slight updraft of air above the curl of breaking waves.

Surfing Pelican

Large air-sacks under the skin and hollow bones help pelicans float and a tough layer of fiber in their breast muscles helps pelicans keep their wings extended during long flights. Like other large birds pelicans search out thermals and other updrafts to climb into the sky for long flights.

I find Brown Pelicans to be surprisingly colorful.

Pelican eying me with suspicion

Their heads have yellow, red, and a bluish tint as well. I suspect that the vibrancy of the colors changes in accordance with mating season. Peruvian Pelicans also share this colorful head, perhaps being even more colorful.

Peruvian Pelican (Pelecanus thagus) in Paracas, Peru

Pelicans have a primeval aspect to them. We no-longer have Pterosaurs, but looking at Pelicans I feel a sense of what it must have been like when the sky was full of those wide-winged, short-tailed flying creatures.

Landing averted

Hummingbirds – miracles of evolution

Of all birds hummingbirds are one of the most fun to watch.  They are fast, colorful, and tiny, the smallest ones roughly the same size as a large moth or butterfly.  They are probably best known for their maneuverability.

Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) coming in for a landing. Note the small tail, the curve of the body, and the large wing muscles.

These birds are compact and extremely well muscled.  Their tails are short and flexible, notice how the tail of the Anna’s Hummingbird in the above photo is curved to the side and folded to cup the air to assist in guiding the bird in to its landing spot.  Their wings are short with thick muscles covering the limbs and have a range of motion far greater than that of other birds.

The name Hummingbird comes from the noise of their wings beating at 25 beats per second, about 1500 beats per minute. This high wing-beat and the extraordinary wing flexibility allows hummingbirds to hover far more effectively and energy efficiently than any other bird.

To hover they flap their wings in a figure-8 pattern, generating lift on both the down and upstroke.  Approximately 75% of the life of generated on the down-stroke with the remainder on the up-stroke.  The University of Texas has some nice graphs and charts providing more detailed information on how this works.

Anna’s Hummingbird hovering in front of Tobacco Tree (Nicotiana glauca) flowers

In to achieve this maneuverability hummingbirds give up the ability to glide.  In effect they have no low energy flight, they are always running at near full speed.  A 170 pound person would need to eat (and metabolize) 130 pounds of bread a day to keep up with energy output of a hummingbird.  Their energy output is so great that they enter torpor at night, a sort of hibernation.  If they did not do this the hummingbird would starve to death during the night.

Hummingbird flight characteristics are very nearly a blend of bird and insect methods of achieving lift.

Hummingbirds are generally extremely colorful, especially the males.  Like many birds this color is not pigment generated, but is the result of highly specialized feathers light refracting feathers.  Think of oil on water, that rainbow sheen that you see when light reflects from it.  Birds use the same technique, but in a far more specialized way.  Rather than an undifferentiated rainbow of colors the micro-structure of the feathers refracts only specific colors.  The natural color of the feathers is a dark brown, almost black.

Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) perched on a non-native Tobacco Tree (Nicotiana glauca)

I know I’ve used this photo before, but it illustrates the refraction vs pigment issue well.  The bold purple-pink behind the bird’s eyes is the color we associate with the male Anna’s Hummingbird’s head and gorget (the throat portion).  The dark, almost black, feathers are at the wrong angle to reflect the light and show the natural dark color of their pigment.

The tree in these photos is a Tobacco Tree (Nicotiana glauca), not native to North America, but native to South America, a place where there is a stunning variety of hummingbirds.  This tree and hummingbirds have a long relationship and have mutually evolved to reinforce that relationship.  Hummingbirds and may other birds and insects (and not a few mammals and reptiles as it turns out) drink nectar from flowers.  Not everyone who drinks the nectar will pollinate the plant, thus special relationships evolve.  Plants with long tube-like flowers (penstemon, humming-bird sage, tobacco, monkey flowers, heliconia, etc) are specialized to provide nectar for animals with long tongues that can reach the nectar.

Hummingbird tongue

Hummingbirds not only have long, narrow beaks, they have long, feathery tongues with which to lap up nectar hidden deep inside the tube-like flowers.  As they drink the plant deposits pollen on the beak and sometimes the bird’s head (two photos up you can see the pollen discoloring the hummingbird’s beak).  The next flower the bird visits gets a little pollen from the previous flower and the plant is happy.

A quick look at the shape and color of flowers will often give you a good sense of what type of animal the plant relies on for pollination.

Hummingbird catching insects under a Coast Live Oak

Hummingbirds need protein as well.  Some, such as the Anna’s Hummingbird, catch insects in flight, many others raid spiderwebs for insects.  Here in North America this is a relatively safe prospect, but in parts of South America there are spiders that will happily catch and eat a hummingbird and spin webs more than strong enough to trap the birds.

Hummingbirds have such a need for vast quantities of high energy foods that they are often extremely territorial, engaging in vicious fights and high speed chases.  Like most animals they would rather warn opponents off than waste energy fighting them.  Different species have various methods of letting others know how tough they are.

Anna’s Hummingbird staking out its territory

The little fellow above is marking out territory by fluffing out his head feathers.

One of the most amazing things about hummingbirds to me is that they migrate long distance, some species crossing the Gulf of Mexico in one long flight with no food.  At the shortest distance this is a flight of 480 miles, many birds fly closer to 600 miles to make this open water trip.  For a bird that only weights several ounces, cannot glide, and needs to eat constantly this is a truly remarkable voyage.

On a final note, hummingbirds are far more intelligent than most people realize.  Their memories are phenomenal, allowing them to keep track of individual flowers within their territories and when they were last visited for nectar.  They have the largest brain-to-body size of any bird.

How Does the Acorn Get from Here to There? – Scrub Jays and Oak Trees

With a few exceptions trees in the Oak genus (Quercus) are easily, if not immediately, recognizable.  There are approximately 600 species in the genus divided into two sub-genera.  Oaks are found in North and South America, Europe, North Africa, and Asia.  The oaks in Asia are in the sub-genera, the Ring-Cupped Oaks (Cyclobalanopsis), whereas oaks in the rest of the world are members of the Quercus sub-genera.

Oaks have complicated relationships with a number of other species ranging from symbiotic fungus to parasitic wasps to humans.  Oaks feature in our mythology, we use the bark of Quercus suber, Cork Oak, to make stoppers for wine and for soft flooring, we make furniture and barrels from some species of oak, we made cart and early car axles from particularity strong species, they make excellent firewood, and they are fun to climb.

Climbing a Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) when I was little

Oaks also make acorns.  Sometimes, particularly when mast fruiting, oaks produce enormous quantities of acorns.  Most of these acorns are eaten by animals; insects, humans, pigs, squirrels, birds, and a host of other animals.  The survival and reseeding rate for acorns is low, but oak trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching ages of 500 years or more.  In the absence of other factors this low seedling success rate is not an issue as the tree produces thousands of acorns each year for hundreds of years.  Some seeds are bound to survive and turn into new trees.

Oaks have a particular problem.  Their seeds (acorns) are large.

Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) acorns

By themselves the trees can only drop the acorns under their own drip-line, in the shade where they will not sprout.  How does the tree send its seeds to a new place where they can sprout and are not left in a dense mat of easily found and eaten food?

Plants, being clever and manipulative in their slow vegetative manner, have all manner of methods for getting animals to carry their seeds far and wide.  Oaks harness many species to do this work, bribing them with the highly nutritious seeds they produce.  Across much of North America scrub and blue jays are put to work distributing acorns across the landscape.

Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica) in the Santa Monica Mountains – possibly Belding’s Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica obscura)

Meet the Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica), also known as the California Scrub Jay, and sometimes known as, “That damned bird!”  It is a mid-sized bird, perhaps a foot long including tail, loud, strong, clever, and imperious.  Like all jays it is in the Crow family (Corvidae), one of, if not the, smartest of bird types.  Corvids are renowned for their problem solving abilities and feats of memorization.  Scrub jays are no exception.

When the acorns are ripe jays congregate on the trees, grab as many acorns as they can, and fly off to stash them for future use.

Scrub Jay carrying acorns to hide for lean times

Each bird seems able to carry 3 or 4 acorns at a time, in the picture above there are two in the jay’s beak and at least one more in its crop.

Jays will carry acorns up to a mile and a half, hiding them in widely distributed caches of 1-3 acorns per cache.  The bird memorizes the locations of each cache, that of any other caches it sees other birds store, and will move its own caches if it knows it has been observed making its own cache.  Some of these caches will be forgotten and in some of those the seeds will sprout.

One bird doesn’t seem like it would make much of an impact, but one must recognize both the diligence of each bird and the number of birds engaged in this activity.

Scrub Jays harvesting acorns (@ 40 photographs taken over @ 10 minutes)

The photo above is a compilation of about 40 photographs taken over roughly 10 minutes.  This level of activity has been constant on this tree throughout the day over the past 2 or 3 weeks.  The scale of the endeavor starts to become apparent.  Beneath the tree ground squirrels and gray squirrels gather seeds from the ground to add to their own larders as well.

The oak tree has effectively expanded its dispersal distance from a few feet to over a mile.  Not only that, the oak tree has found a way to have its seeds hidden in safe locations and planted in the ground.  Only a small proportion of the acorns will survive to make new trees, but over the 350 year expected life-span of this particular tree it is not unreasonable that several hundred acorns will survive to produce trees that will live long enough to produce seeds of their own.

Scrub Jay enjoying the sun

+++ Cathy commented that any discussion of oak trees in California is incomplete if Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) are not included.  They don’t live where I am at the moment, but last week I was up in my old stomping grounds and visited one of my favorite grainery trees.  Grainery trees are where these communal woodpeckers store and dry their collected acorns.  This particular tree is an ancient, wind-blasted Douglas Fir atop Mt Tamalpais, has a nearly 4 foot diameter, has been lightening struck numerous times, and sits amidst a copse of large moss enshrouded oak trees.

Old grainery trees will be used by many generations of these little woodpeckers and the trees look like an art project .

In any event, here is a photo of part of a grainery.+++

Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) use all surfaces of a tree to make their larders. They will use fence-posts and the sides of barns as well.

*   *  * *** *  *   *

As a final note, in many areas, but in California in particular, oaks of all species are severely imperiled.  Oak woodlands are often considered to be the most important ecosystem in the region, but they have been subject to a number of stresses.  Oaks have been extensively cleared for orchards, vineyards, farmland, and urban use.  Saplings are eaten by cattle in range-lands, non-native feral pigs sniff out and eat all the acorns they can find, sometimes damaging tree roots in the process, and an ill-considered introduction of turkeys to the state by Fish & Wildlife to raise hunting revenue has led to even more acorns consumed by these overly prolific birds.

On top of all this, Phytophthora ramorum, a pathogen in the fungus-like family of water-molds, was accidentally introduced to the state via exotic ornamental plants and is causing wide-spread devastation.  This is commonly called Sudden Oak Death Syndrome and foresters strongly recommend not transporting oak firewood and washing cutting tools and boots when moving between oak growing regions.

Chamise – a key chaparral plant

The chaparral ecosystem in California is comprised of a dense and diverse collection of small to mid-sized woody shrubs.   It covers the hills in a shallow cloak of gray-green vegetation just thick enough to soften the contours of the land, but not to hide them.  In some places the chaparral is dense and thick, so much so that it is nearly impossible to penetrate it, other places it is sparse and low.  Animal trails riddle the chaparral and the bones of the land show through with a dramatic abruptness.

Sandstone outcrops above a chaparral covered hillside at Red Rocks State Park in Topanga

Chaparral grows primarily in dry, hot areas, as such the plants have a number of moisture saving adaptations that are most easily seen in their leaves which tend to be either small or waxy, or both in many cases.  The ecosystem is surprisngly diverse in both plants and animals, but despite this there are a small handful that are common from Mexico through most of California and that, taken together, could be considered to be the background matrix of chaparral plants.  Sage (Artemisia) and Ceanothus both are broad genus level plants with many individual members.

These plants are common in the chaparral, and taken with another extremely common plant, Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), comprise what I think of as the matrix plants for the California wide chaparral.

Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) flowers are small and clustered in tight bundles at the tips of the branches

Chamise, also known as greasewood, is in the rose family and produces clusters of small white flowers that look much like another rose family genus, Spiraea, which includes hardhack and meadowsweet.  The flowers set seed and dry on the branch, remaining affixed to the stalk for several seasons after blooming.

The leaves of Chamise are needle-like, clustered in little bundles called fascicles, the word the scientific name derives from.  On the whole, the plant looks something like a cross between rosemary and juniper with shredding bark, gnarled limbs, and and regularly placed leaf clusters.

Old Chamise plant on a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains

Like many chaparral plants Chamise seeds require fire to germinate.  This ensures that the seedlings will be able to take advantage of the temporary increase of nutrients and open sunlight in the plant’s early stages of growth.  Estimates of the longevity of Chamise vary, but range from 100-200 years.

Chamise is not generally considered to be good browse for animals, but it is common to find extensive patches of heavily browsed plants.  In some places the browse is so heavy that the bushes look like sculpted hedges, in other places they look like carefully trimmed bonsai trees.

Browsed Chamise branches

When it has not been browsed Chamise produces a relatively dense growth of vertical shoots.  Over time many of these will die, with the dead stalks being retained by the plant.  Some estimates of the total volume of retained deadwood on old plants reaches 60-70%, greatly adding to the potential combustibility of the Chamise.

Young Chamise branches

California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum) can sometimes be mistaken for Chamise by the casual eye, but the leaves are broader and flatter and the flower structure is very different.

California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum)

Chamise is found primarily in California, though northwest Mexico and western Nevada also host populations of this plant.  Within California it is found in nearly all of the chaparral habitats as is shown on the digital Jepson Herbaria hosted by UC Berkeley.

Chaparral types with Chamise

This is a tough plant.  It grows with little water, on hard, rocky soil, and can even grow in serpentine soils, a soil type that kills many plants.  Many people do not like Chamise due to its flammability, but it is an excellent erosion control plant, provides cover for a number of birds and small animals, and serves as a last resort browse as well.

It is not the only chaparral plant by any stretch, nor even the most typical in any given area, but it is the one I have seen in the most places through California.