California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: long seed life, bunch grasslands, exotic annual grassland, Los Angeles, Nineteenth Century, Central Valley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Fascinating . . . . The firsthand descriptions [are] worth a peek."--San Francisco Chronicle

Product Description

Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. In this lively, vividly detailed work, Richard A. Minnich synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources--from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory--to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies. At the same time, his groundbreaking book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape and instead arguing that wildflowers filled this role. As he examines the changes in the state's landscape over the past three centuries, Minnich brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management in a book that will change our of view of native California.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520253531
• ISBN-13: 978-0520253537
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #554,088 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent summary of history of California flowers, May 20, 2009

By	Richard D. Norris (UCSD-Scripps Institution of oceanography) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book summarizes changes in California's grasslands based upon the accounts of early European explorers. The author's main objective is to discuss how the serial introduction of European exotics has altered the native vegetation and to refute a long standing hypothesis that the native vegetation was dominated by bunch grasses. The basic message is that when Europeans first arrived, they found coastal plain vegetation structured by annual burning by native people who burned the land to improve the growth of annual flowers for seed collection. The dry interior valleys of California also were dominated by annual flowers that would dry up in the Spring and Summer producing large expanses of nearly bare ground. European introductions of Erodium, wild oats, and foxtail grasses in the later 1700's and the suppression of native burning with the establishment of the mission system altered the coastal plain into grasslands. The interior valleys were relatively unaffected by these first introductions because the plants were adapted to Mediterranean climates of the coastal region, not the severe summer dryness of the interior valleys. Interestingly, the timing of European introductions is partly determined from the kinds of plants used to construct adobe bricks in the missions. A second round of introductions in the mid 1800's of brome grasses was much more destructive for the native flower fields through increases in fire and space competition in the interior valleys.

I enjoyed this book and found it an excellent source of explorer quotations on the state of California vegetation over the past three centuries. The book is well written and researched. The author also addresses changes in the population of both native and introduced grazing animals and makes an attempt to sort out the population growth of cattle introduced by the missionaries. I found it interesting to think that there used to be antelope in San Diego and elk in Santa Cruz. It is also remarkable that the native tribes made such intensive use of Chia seeds (collected with a basket and a beater) that they could afford to give the Spanish missionaries 100 weight in seeds for the expeditionary forces!

The book's flaws are that it drags a bit in places as you read about yet another explorer's account of what they saw (there are lots and lots). I also would have liked a table on the timing of the various introductions of exotics. As a paleontologist, it would have been nice to have a little more information on evidence from the pollen record (or fire scar record) on the history of vegetation over the Holocene (the last 11,500 years). There have also been some nice compilations from tree ring data of the drought history of California that could have been used to indicate a time line of events (like when the major cattle die offs occurred) in a graphical fashion. All these are suggestions for a revised 2nd edition. This book is a gem and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in what California has lost in the way of its former glory of wildflower displays. The book is also worthwhile reading before or after a drive through Carrizo Plain, where you can see a little (but wonderful) scrap of what interior California used to be like.