Redbud Review Newsletter of the Redbud Chapter—Nevada and Placer Counties

California Native Plant SocietySpring 2012

Field Trips Evening Programs

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Successful Gardening with Native PlantsApril 25 (Wednesday), 7 PM Madelyn Helling Library Community Meeting Room

Spring Plant SaleSaturday, May 5

Sierra College, Rocklin

Visit www.redbud-cnps.org for details on plant sale

Spring Field TripsAll of our field trips are open to the public and are free of charge. Bring water, lunch/snack, hand lens, wildflower book, and sun protection and/or rain gear, as needed. Children are warmly welcomed, but please arm them with a whistle! Unless stated otherwise, no pets are allowed on our field trips. We suggest ride sharing, as parking space at most trailheads is limited. We also suggest that you contribute some money to the driver for gas—perhaps $5 for fewer than 40 miles round-trip, and $10 for more than 40 miles round-trip. Unless stated otherwise, our trips are easy, as we usually travel very slowly and stop to view, identify, talk about, and enjoy each plant or fungus species. Most of our trips are led by more than one botanist. For most of our trips we will meet at the Rood Center on Highway 49 in Nevada City, in front of the main building—NOT at the library. We will then form car pools and drive to the trailhead. In many cases you can meet us at the trailhead if this is more convenient for you. Our newly published book, Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties, California, will be available for purchase at the meeting place before each field trip. Retail price is $29.95 plus tax; Redbud Chapter members (including brand new ones) are entitled to a 15% discount. We can accept cash and checks. This book will be very helpful on all of our field trips! Field trips will be canceled if heavy rain is predicted. If in doubt, call 530-264-8555 after 7AM on the morning of the trip for a recorded message.

We have a native plant sale and festival coming up. This would be a good time for you to share your success stories and failures regarding native plant gardens. Which plants have you been successful with? Which plants have not worked well for you? This is also a good time to ask questions of those who have designed native plant gardens. Which plants would be best to choose, given your altitude, exposure to the sun, available sunlight, slope, soil type, available moisture, etc.? Join us at the Auburn Civic Center Rose Room at1225 Lincoln Way, Auburn, for this informative discussion.

Field trips (continued)

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Spring on the South Fork of theYuba RiverSaturday, April 7Meet at the Rood Center at 1:00 PM or at the Independence Trail bathroom on Hwy 49, 1:20 PM.

One of the best early wildflower trails in the area has been re-opened—the Independence Trail upstream. And with the rain that we are receiving as I write this, the trail will be putting on a great show! This trip will be cancelled if heavy rain is forecast, but light rain will not hinder us. It will last 2-3 hours, but you may turn back at any time.

Vernal PoolsThursday, April 19Meet at Beale AFB at 12:30 PM (by reservation only)

Beale AFB has a great tour planned for Thursday, April 19, as part of their earth week celebration.

For about 25 years, Dr. Tom Griggs, of River Partners, has guided the plant portion of the tour. He is a botanist, and brings unique perspective, having visited the same pools during the same week for so many years. Also, there will be a vernal pool invertebrate expert on hand. He may be able to net some critters for everyone to see. Vernal pools are remarkable habitats. Beale AFB has some high quality pools, and puts great effort into their protection. This field trip is by reservation only. Please send your name, date of birth, and drivers license number to Roger at rogm@SBCglobal.net by Sunday, April 8. He will then pass this information along to the trip coordinator at Beale AFB and will contact you with further information about the meeting place.

Other Field Trips

For further field trips, check our website (www.redbud-cnps.org) or join our newsgroup on the website and you will be notified by email.

I am equal parts honored and excited to take on the role of president for the Redbud Chapter of the Cali-fornia Native Plant Society. My husband Will and I moved here in late October after spending a brief year and a half in Chicago where I worked with the Chicago Botanic Garden doing shoreline restoration. My love of plants began with a high school job in a local nursery and continued to grow as I spent much of my professional life at a public garden in rural Georgia. Working with others who were so enthused and actively conserving Georgia’s precious wildflow-ers I couldn’t help but share their excitement with all things native. Being involved with the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance I realized the value of joining forces with government agencies, local landowners, and many fine folks in the academic arena to ensure that we were taking the right steps towards protect-ing our native plants. I am eagerly anticipating the opportunity to connect groups and individuals in our community here in Nevada and Placer Counties in an effort to conserve our local native plants!

Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in the CNPS Conservation Conference down in San Diego, where I learned how active our society is and the in-credible amounts of effort being put forth by so many across the state. Without the generosity of the Redbud chapter I would not have been able to have this expe-rience. Thank you so much for the exposure to new and exciting native plant activities around the state!I am eager to see what our chapter is capable of and to gain momentum with our mission of native plant conservation. I am lucky enough to have met some of you at the recent monthly meetings and I look forward to meeting many more as California shows us her springtime wildflower show. Thank you all for your support and continued involvement with the con-servation movement and I encourage you all to share your ideas, accomplishments, and goals with me and other fellow members as we kick off the New Year!

Cheers,Jane

Greetings fellow Redbuds!

A Garden of Many Purposesby Brad Carter

Ten years ago when my partner and I moved to Grass Valley, I knew we would create a landscape garden around our new home. My educational training in horticulture and a career working in public gardens make this a natural choice and enjoyable project for me. When first considering what we wanted this new garden to be, there were a few features I knew we wanted: fire safety, drought tolerant plants, and a good fence to exclude deer and rabbits. What we did not know when we started this project was all the different and unexpected uses and purposes our garden would achieve.

Building the GardenThe garden took about five years to complete its initial development. The first order of business was to remove about an acre of old half-dead and highly flammable manzanita growing on the slope behind the house. Next step was putting up the deer and rabbit fence. We used a plastic fence product sold at Peaceful Valley Farm Supply that is 7.5’ tall and comes in a 330’ length rolls. It is black, extremely strong and U.V. stabilized and lasts 7-10 years. After erecting the fence we built the garden path, which took three summers and about 80 tons of rock and pea gravel to construct. After completing a 200- to 300-foot section of path during the summer, that area of the garden would be planted with California native plants in the fall. Drip irrigation was installed at the time the nursery plants went in the ground and it was used for about three years, until our drought-tolerant native plants were well established and no longer in need of summer irrigation. A few years ago, all the drip tubing was removed and the garden is now sustained by winter rain and a little hand water done in the spring to “extend” the rainy season a bit.

Using the GardenThe garden has been useful to us in ways expected and unexpected. We added an extension to the already large deck to make room for a hot tub and more outdoor living and entertaining. We also get lots of exercise maintaining the garden, mostly in the form of weeding that is done in the late winter and early spring. And it is fun to be out there observing the birds, butterflies, reptiles and amphibians that visit or live in the garden. These are the ways we expected to enjoy the garden.

A pond with a bird bath/dripping fountain and “Deep Sea Worms.”Page 3

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Outdoor GalleryAs we developed the garden, I also became interested in ceramics. I enjoy making large-scale garden pots and sculpture. Over the last few years, the garden has become an outdoor gallery of sorts, where I display this work. I installed a pond and fountain surrounded by long, blue, tapering undulating worm forms. Currently, I am building a forest of 8–foot tall ceramic trees that will be situated along the garden path so that you walk through them and under their canopy. And there are lots of more traditional gardenware such as lanterns and large planting pots.

Venue for Fundraising EventsAs the garden began reaching maturity, we started looking for other ways to utilize it. Last year, a friend from Unity in the Gold Country Spiritual Center suggested that we use our garden as a venue for raising money to help provide health services for people with HIV and AIDS in Nevada County. We decided we would host a spring garden party with an art auction, live music, food, wine and garden tours and call it Art For Life. Forty artists, including many friends from Art Works Gallery in Grass Valley, donated artwork for the auction; dozens of people volunteered to staff the event; and fifty people bought tickets to the event and participated in the silent

auction of the artwork. We netted $6,000 from this event last year, all of which has been used to provide essential needs not funded through government programs.

One of the paying guests from last year’s Art For Life event was local attorney Betzi Hart, who is past president of one of the local chapters of Soroptimist International, which puts on the annual Spring Garden Tour mega-event here in Nevada County. She asked if we would like to have our garden be included in the 2012 Spring Garden Tour, and we agreed.

So this year we will be hosting two events: Art For Life will be held on Sunday, May 6, from 1 to 5 PM, at the peak of the spring bloom. Admission to this event is $50, which includes food, hosted local wine bar, live piano music by Jack Wallace and the silent art auctions. Call (530) 272-8900 for more information or to purchase tickets.

Two weeks later, on the weekend of May 19-20, from 10 AM to 4 PM, is the 19th annual Spring Garden Tour. Our garden and seven others will be part of this self-guided tour. Tickets are $20 in advance and available at various businesses or by calling (530) 273-7989. All funds raised are used to promote the betterment of women and children in our local community and beyond.

The board of directors approved in the fall of 2011 a plan to provide grants (stipends) for people attending the biannual CNPS Conservation Conference in San Diego. The following people applied and were awarded funds which enabled them to attend the conference. The comments below is brief feedback on what they found beneficial for their work here in Nevada and Placer Counties. All the recipients are still doing work with their environmental organizations.

Kelly Hickman - Education Coordinator, Sierra Streams Institute

I would have to say that my favorite session was on Saturday. I am so happy that Josie Crawford organized “The Vital Role of Education in the Future of Conservation.” It was such a great opportunity

to learn what other organizations throughout the state are doing and how they are approaching environmental education. Specifically my favorite talks were “California’s New Environmental Education Initiative” and “Empowering young people, from diverse backgrounds, to become tomorrow’s environmental leaders.” I am planning on contacting both of the speakers that gave these talks to learn more about their program and how we can implement similar projects in Nevada County.

Jane Godfrey - Redbud Chapter and Sierra Streams Institute

If I had to choose only one that inspired me the most, it would have to be Dana Morawitz from CAL-IPC (Invasive Plant Council) with her CalWeedMapper. Dana talked about the online tool used for regional

Redbud’s CNPS Conference Grants

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management priorities shared between Calflora and Cal IPC. There are currently 204 species on the Cal IPC inventory. As an example, Dana actually pulled up the Nevada/Placer county WMA. This showed a table of information on all species present in the region. I am excited to go online and learn more about what this site has to offer and how it can affect our efforts with conservation!

Denise Zitnik - American Rivers

Denise attended the California Water Board preconference workshop entitled “Meeting Water Quality Requirements with Native Plants.” The workshop was helpful in providing ideas to bring native plants into the conversation during hydrology based projects, like those often completed by American Rivers. For example, even if reintroducing native plantings is outside the budget or the scope of work of our grants, projects should use the health of native plant communities as a corollary indicator of watershed rehabilitation.

One of the highlight presentations was from Shana Gross, a USFS researcher, evaluating the health of Grass Lake using the trends of two genera of Bryophytes. Grass Lake is close to American River’s Bear Valley Meadow restoration site, which is reason enough to stop by to check out interlinking hydrology and some really neat Bryophytes next spring.

Denise Della Santina - Restoration, SYRCL

The horticulture sessions included valuable information I will use in propagating native plants for habitat restoration in our watershed. Scientific data was shared supporting the use of sustainable potting media (earthworm castings, rice hulls, etc.) that satisfy many of the nutritional needs of common CA native plants. A study on the variation in potting media’s air porosity and the affects on nursery production and plant vigor of common CA native plants was also very good information.

I enjoyed interacting with knowledgeable and experienced troubadours in botany and conservation, such as Bruce Pavlok. I see great value in the work Bruce Pavlak is doing internationally with mining companies, by attempting to understand and document the planned deconstruction of sites in order to guide reclamation and rehabilitation after natural resource extraction.

Christopher Gee - Bear Yuba Land Trust

Chris attended the Department of Fish and Game’s presentation on their Areas of Conservation Emphasis II Data. Chris found this GIS (Geographic Information System) data to be very relevant to his work for the Bear Yuba Land Trust. The BYLT is currently expanding its impact through the Northern Foothills Partnership, a cooperative venture with the Trust for Public Land and the Placer Land Trust in the preservation of the foothills of Northern California. With ACE-II data as a scientific basis, Chris will be assisting in the creation of strategic plans in the conservation of both flora and fauna at a regional scale.

David Magney - Redbud Conservation Chair and CNPS Chapter Council Chair

The CNPS Conservation Conference is extremely valuable in a number of ways, including learning from colleagues, networking, hearing about different methods being used, what works and what doesn’t, updates on rare plants, conservation issues, and what is happening around the state. It is a great opportunity for conservationists and environmental consultants to learn what is new and upcoming in botanical sciences, from academic researchers and student research projects.

While my interests are varied, and always disappointed that I can’t attend all the talks, the presentations on rare plants and taxonomic research were the most interesting to me.

Future grant information will be posted on the Redbud website: http//www.redbud-cnps.orgLook for the Grant Information Link in the left column.

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Information from www.LasPilitas.com, written by Bert Wilson and adapted by Cindy Rubin and Denise Della Santina

Wildflowers are not just “pretty faces.” They are essential to the functioning of their biotic community—a function that is not duplicated by alien annuals. Annual wildflowers come up in periods of adequate moisture and are inoculated at germination by a combination of fungal spores and direct mycorrhizal root connection with neighboring shrubs and perennials.

Mycorrhiza is a finely woven matrix of friendly fungus that forms a symbiotic relationship with a plant, by connecting to, and living outside or inside, the plant’s roots. The fungus provides nutrients and water to the plant, and the plant provides carbohydrates to the fungus. The fungus will also connect plants to each other by way of its hyphae, the tiny strands of the body of the fungus.

Annual wildflowers are provided extra nutrition from this mycorrhizal association during their short life. In the event of a midwinter drought, they are supported by water from “mother plants” through mycorrhiza. In our short growing season, limited as it is to moisture, the 100 times more surface area and 10,000 times more surface length of mycorrhizal roots, in relation to non-mycorrhizal roots, is a significant advantage. Moreover, mycorrhizal roots are quicker on the uptake of water after a rain shower (3 days versus 14 days). Rainfall is captured in the below-ground ecosystem—held within the bodies of microorganisms, plant roots, and soil—so there is little or no runoff, erosion, or leaching of nutrients from the soil. Effective rainfall is substantially increased.

As our native annual wildflowers decline and die at the end of their short season of life, their nutrition, moisture, and some of their biomass is transferred to the other mycorrhizal hosts on the fungal “grid.” An area lush with wildflowers in the spring can be bare patches of soil in the summer, between widely spaced perennials and shrubs. These perennial and woody plants are provided with much energy in this

late spring–early summer period at the end of the wildflower show. This energy is one reason why so many of our shrubs flower in midsummer. Annually, energy is cycled from the wildflowers in the spring to the perennials, shrubs, and trees in the summer, and then back to the wildflowers the next spring.

California native ecosystems methods of cooperation are very different from many of our common garden plants methods of competition. Most horticultural perennials, annuals, and vegetables that people raise in the garden are at best weakly dependent on underground ecosystems or each other. Why should they be? We water and fertilize them. We see immediate results in faster growth, more flowers, longer flowering time, etc. Also, many garden plants have been hybridized so that they hardly resemble their relatives in the wild. Many of these garden species have a survival strategy known as “ruderal.”

Ruderal plants need a mineral- and moisture-rich environment to flourish. They rely on a competitive strategy of getting their needs met by flowering quickly, and producing many seeds (which can be viable at just 10 percent maturity) to out-reproduce their competition. They do not cooperate with other plants in the vicinity by sharing water and nutrition. They quickly capture available water and nutrition in an area and are on their way! Ruderal plant life cycles are based upon year-to-year strategies, with little or no long-term strategies. Consequently, ruderal plants are mostly annuals or short-lived perennials or biennials. In contrast to most gardens, the native ecosystem is a well-ordered, long-term system. If California native annuals are taken to other areas, they can become weeds as they begin to take on ruderal characteristics due to the loss of their native mycorrhizal associations such as the California Poppy’s weediness in areas of the Eastern US. In their natural habitat, they are more dependent upon the plant community and do not exhibit ruderal tendencies.

Nonnative annuals, including grasses and broad-leaf plants, differ from our native wildflowers in that these plants are typically ruderal in nature, especially when separated from their native homeland plant

The Importance of Native WildflowersBriarPatch Native Wildflower Garden

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Sky Lupine, Tufted Poppy, AnnualAgoseris, Sierra Tidy Tips (probably),and Kellogg’s Monkeyflower alongWindy Point Trail, Auburn StateRecreation Area, Colfax area,Placer County.

Annual Wildflowers

Birds-eye Gilia, Bicolored Linanthus, and Blue Dicks spring after summer burn in field along Hwy 49

near Dry Creek Road, Auburn, Placer County.

Tufted Poppy, Popcorn Flower, andBush Lupine along Ponderosa Way,Auburn State Recreation Area,Colfax area, Placer County.

Pale Owl’s Clover and Wine Cup Clarkia at Folsom LakeState Recreation Area, Placer County.

Ramm’s Madia, Miniature Lotus, Sky Lupine,and Valley Tassels at Hell’s Half Acre,

Grass Valley, Nevada County.

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community. Ruderals are non-mycorrhizal or will become mycorrhizal only if food or water can be drawn from the mycorrhizal grid, but they do not return anything to the grid. They live by competition. They’re the first to flower and the first to seed. Ruderals are favored if there is fertility, moisture, and disturbance, especially in the soil life community. Ruderals are the first ones into disturbed areas, where they use as much water and nutrition as fast as possible. Their whole life is spent trying to make as many seeds as possible before their short life is spent. Most of our chaparral plant species need a mulch or litter layer (except for the grasslands and desert) that will gradually form as the plants reach their maturity. This mulch and litter layer needs to make soil contact; standing annual, introduced grasses or other weeds will block the formation of the litter layer. Thus, there are multiple mechanisms by which the nonnative annuals break the cycling of nutrients through the fungal grid, to and from the native perennial and woody plants and the array of other life forms that depend on the mycorrhizal grid.

Wildflowers also play an essential role after a fire by photosynthesizing and passing nutrients and water through the fungal grid to plants that had their tops burned off. This aids our many native shrubs and trees that are crown sprouters (e.g., oaks, coffeeberries, silk tassels, Toyon, Redbud) to soon regrow from their still intact root systems.

Native plants have root structures that can grow more than 15 to 25 feet deep. (Mountain Mule Ears, Wyethia mollis, an herbaceous perennial common at higher elevations in our area, has been found to root as deep as 60’.) This deep root structure brings moisture up to the surface root systems. After a fire, this hydraulic lift provides moisture to the crown-sprouting shrubs and trees and their mycorrhizal associates. It is a beautiful sight to see green growth a few days to weeks after a fire.

It has been found that 40–85 percent of a plant community’s energy is in underground structures, including mycorrhiza. Little of the mycorrhizal and root grid on a site is disturbed by a fire. Dry soil is a good insulator: Fires can reach 400–670°F (200–350°C), but the temperature 1–5 cm (1–2

inches) down remains normal. In dry soils, spores and inoculated roots present below can provide an ample source of inoculum for young seedlings that germinate out of the soil seed bank. However, if the soils are wet at the time of a fire, as in winter with prescribed burns, everything changes: 95 percent of the soil bacteria and a greater amount of soil fungi are killed.

After a fire, the mycorrhiza is still intact, holding the soil surface together. The strongest stabilizer on hillsides is probably this mycorrhizal grid. Seeding grass or other weeds (which often contaminate commercial grass seed) can starve the grid by greedily extracting all the nutrients on the site before the mycorrhizal plants can re-establish and feed the fungus with carbon (food). The mycorrhizal community collapses, the microfauna eat the fungus, their community collapses, and the system becomes bacterial as the bacteria eat the dead microfauna. The fungi feed the fauna at the bottom of the food chain. As the bottom of the food chain collapses, little native vegetation is left, leading to mud slides in winter and fires each summer as the nonnative annuals and grasses take over. Thus, planting (seeding) the wrong plants into an ecosystem immediately after a fire destroys the ecology of a site.

It is important to note that when the annual, fire-following wildflowers die for the summer, they leave little litter. Clean bare ground is normal and healthy. The same situation occurs in other relatively undisturbed plant communities—where native wildflowers are waist deep in early spring, on the same site in summer, there is no litter or dead matter taller than 1” with bare patches in between. This leaves no fire fuel! Compare this with introduced species like Star Thistle (Centauria spp.) or Ripgut Grass (Bromus diandrus). The fibrous stems stay erect and flammable long after the plant is dead.

The pioneer wildflowers capture the nutrition of the site for the fungal grid to recharge, then the shrubs and trees to follow. No succession can occur without the wildflowers first. An awareness of the complex underground components of plant communities can enhance our appreciation of lovely spring wildflower displays.

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Wildflower Garden ToursTours meet by the shade pavilion. Rain (beyond light sprinkles) will cancel a tour.

Sunday, April 22nd, 2:00 PMSaturday, May 19th, 4:00 PMSunday, June 3rd, 4:00 PMSaturday, July 7th, 7:00 PM

Wish ListSign maker• : We would love a carved wooden sign for the new shade pavilion.Incense Cedar• : Interesting logs, 6–10’ long by 16” or more in diameter for hand-crafted picnic table and assorted benches.Black Locust wood• : Logs or bolts , 1–6’ by about 12” or more in diameter for use with cedar in creating hand-crafted garden furniture.Granite curbing• : 25–40’ of reclaimed (or new) granite curbing or other quarried granite block.Slate• : Local slate for pavers (needs to be at least 1-1/2” thick), that is not wanted where it is.Large rocks• : Again, rocks that are not wanted where they are. We will find a way to get them moved.Geologist or geology student• : To help identify rocks.Jack hammer service• : To break up approximately 100’ of nonfunctional concrete ditch.Web site designer-developer• : To design and build a Web site about the Demo Garden.Excess native plants• : In sizes that are transplantable: shrubs, perennials, annuals, and bulbs.

For more information, to volunteer, or to donate: Cindy, crubin@nccn.net, 273-1816

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Save the date!Free 21st Annual Protect American River Canyons

American River Confluence FestivalSaturday, June 9, 2012 _Sunday, June 10, 2012

Keep it Wild, Keep it Scenic!

Place: American River Overlook Park, Pacific Avenue, Auburn, behind the Gold Country fairgrounds.

Featured Acts: Joe Craven, Tepid Club of Cool, The Pyronauts, Haute Trash

Web site for PARC Protect American River Canyons is: www.parc-auburn.org. Look for their "Outings and Events" section for wildflower and nature hikes.

Albin Bills and Samantha Mackey, andillustrator Larry Jansen, have just finished their completely revised and expanded version of Wildflowers of Table Mountain, A Naturalist’s View, which is now in full color. Albin Bills has been exploring and interpreting the naturalhistory of Table Mountain for over 30years, while teachingbiology at nearby Butte College. Drawn to special places,he and his wife Jeri now divide their time between theisland of Kauai and the mountains of California.

Wildflowers of Table Mountain

CNPS-Redbud Chapter228 Commercial St., Box 125Nevada City, CA 95959

www.redbud-cnps.org