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Conifers of California VOL. 47, NO.1 MAY 2019 Conifers of California 2707 K Street, Suite 1 Sacramento, CA 95816-5130 North Coast Shasta Statewide Chapters Phone: 916-447-2677 Fax: 916-447-2727 Bryophyte Chapter www.cnps.org Mt. Lassen Email: [email protected] Tahoe Sanhedrin Redbud Sacramento Dorothy Executive Director Milo El Dorado King Young Napa Baker Valley Dan Gluesenkamp Willis Linn Jepson Sierra Foothills Marin East 2019 Board of Directors Bay North San Joaquin Steve Hartman, President Yerba Buena Santa Clara Bill Waycott, Vice President Valley Santa Cruz County Sequoia Protecting California’s native flora John Hunter, Secretary Bristlecone Monterey since 1965 Cari Porter, Treasurer Bay Alta Peak Cathy Capone, Lucy Ferneyhough, Our mission is to conserve California’s Brett Hall, David Pryor, Cris Sarábia, San Luis Obispo Kern native plants and their natural habitats, Vince Scheidt, Christina Toms Mojave and increase understanding, appreciation, Channel Islands San Gabriel Chapter Council Mtns. and horticultural use of native plants. Riverside – Judy Fenerty, Chair San Bernardino Los Angeles – Orange Larry Levine, Vice Chair Santa Monica Mtns. County Copyright ©2019 San Diego Fremontia Guest Editor South Coast California Native Plant Society David Loeb ISSN 0092-1793 (print) Fremontia Editorial Board ISSN 2572-6870 (online) Baja Jim Andre, Phyllis Faber, Holly Forbes, Join CNPS! California The views expressed by the authors in this Naomi Fraga, Brett Hall, Dan Members receive many benefits, issue do not necessarily represent policy Gluesenkamp, Gordon Leppig, including a free subscription to Fremontia or procedure of CNPS. David Loeb, Pam Muick, Bart O’Brien, Liv O’Keeffe, Teresa Sholars, and Flora. For more information or to join, Greg Suba, Mike Vasey please visit www.cnps.org/membership. Vision …when you can see the forest and the trees Your love of native plants and landscapes can be your legacy. Make a gift that costs nothing during your lifetime by including California Native Plant Society in your will or trust. For more information, contact Christine Pieper, Development Director [email protected] or 916.738.7622 or visit us at www.cnps.org/legacy Photo: Aaron Sims/CNPS FREMONTIA VOL. 47, NO. 1, MAY 2019 FROM THE EDITOR “Conifer” means “cone-bearing” in Latin (cones=cone; ferre=to bear). So conifers are, with a few exceptions (think yew), plants that bear cones. At one time, long long ago, before any of us were born, conifers and CONTENTS other gymnosperms (naked seed-bearing plants) ruled the earth. That was in the Mesozoic era (250 to 65 INTRODUCTION: CALIFORNIA CONIFERS 2 million years ago). The flowering plants didn’t really Ronald M. Lanner become dominant until the Cenozoic. REVISITING CALIFORNIA’S BIG TREES: But there are still large parts of the planet—partic- A SELECTIVE HISTORY 4 ularly in the northern hemisphere—where conifers rule. And we who live in California don’t even need to Robert Van Pelt travel to the taiga to encounter such places. Just think A ONCE AND FUTURE FOREST: of the great pine, fir, and cedar forests of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. And the majestic coast redwood INTERVIEW WITH EMILY BURNS OF SAVE and Douglas-fir forests of the north coast. We probably THE REDWOODS LEAGUE 14 don’t think of the scrubbier, sparser woodlands of the David Loeb High Sierra or southern mountains or central coast, and of the conifers that inhabit them. But we should. PIUTE CYPRESS: AN INTRIGUING PAST AND The authors of this conifer-focused issue of Fremontia UNCERTAIN FUTURE 23 certainly have, devoting great parts of their lives to Jim A. Bartel studying, and helping the rest of us understand, these less charismatic members of the conifer family. CALIFORNIA’S CYPRESSES: PORTRAITS IN I’ve learned a lot working on this issue as guest edi- DIVERSITY & ISOLATION 29 tor over the past six months. Particularly from those Glenn Keator & David Loeb authors, all of them dedicated scientists who were incredibly patient working with this non-scientifical- SUBALPINE SENTINELS: UNDERSTANDING & ly-trained visitor from the world of nature publish- MANAGING WHITEBARK PINE IN CALIFORNIA 34 ing (I was the cofounder and publisher of Bay Nature Michéle Slaton, et al. magazine for 17 years). All of them have contributed their knowledge, time, and expertise to Fremontia for LIMBER PINE’S WILD RIDE WITH CLIMATE: UP, free, in order to share the information they have spent DOWN & ALL AROUND 43 months and years collecting and analyzing. Their work Constance I. Millar helps us better understand both the immensely rich and diverse natural treasures in this state, and the mag- COMING TO TERMS WITH THE NEW NORMAL: nitude of the task we all face—scientists and non-sci- FOREST RESILIENCE & MORTALITY IN THE entists alike—in protecting them in a rapidly changing SIERRA NEVADA 50 climate. Jodi Axelson, et al. So a big thanks to the authors. And to the photogra- phers, who also contributed their work for free. And to READY TO BURN: KNOBCONE PINE AND all of you readers and CNPS members for supporting THE MYTH OF THE PHOENIX 57 this brand of serious, science-based journalism about Matthew Reilly the part of the world we inhabit. BOOK REVIEWS: California Plants and - David Loeb, Guest Editor Flora of Sequoia & Kings Canyon 62 Brett Hall & Ann Huber Cover: Sierra juniper (Juniperus occidentalis var. australis) is the IN MEMORIAM: Jo Kitz, Champion of world’s largest juniper species. And the Bennett Juniper, growing the Santa Monica Mountains 64 in a private inholding within the Stanislaus National Forest in Tuolumne County, is by far the largest of its species, with a Steve Hartman diameter of 389 centimeters. [Robert Van Pelt] INTRODUCTION: CALIFORNIA CONIFERS by Ronald M. Lanner f this issue of Fremontia had appeared when I first arrived in California in 1958 it would have featured a different cast of coniferous characters. California was then a prolific Itimber producer. A three-log load of Douglas- fir was all it took to fill the bunks of a logging truck barreling down the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. Big “sticks” of ponderosa and sugar pine made their way to countless saw- mills to be milled into construction lumber; massive incense cedars were reduced to many Monterey cypress trees at Point Lobos [Arlyn Christopherson] millions of pencils, posts, and grape stakes. On the north coast, fog dripped much of the year from foliage of arrow-straight coast redwoods that reached for the sky while awaiting felling by hard-hatted workers; and in scattered Sierran groves giant sequoias presented impos- sibly massive trunks to tourists who made pilgrimages to them and built California’s renown for majestic forests around the world. I arrived, serendipitously, as newly-discovered bristlecone pines exceeding 4,000 years of age on summits of the White Mountains were being heralded on the pages of National Geographic as “the world’s oldest living things.” California’s conifer forests kept getting more interesting. Since then, our knowledge of this state’s native conifers has broadened, as reflected in this issue ofFremontia. Today we regard all the trees of our forested ecosystems as valuable and essential members. We still honor great size and age, as attested by Robert Van Pelt’s descriptions of our state’s largest trees. But most of our authors are preoccupied with questions of morbidity and survival in some decidedly non-charismatic species (limber pine, anyone?) serving as the canaries in our coal mines in a time of global climate change. In their article, “Forest Resilience and Mortality in the Sierra Nevada,” Jodi Axelson and her co-authors focus on the factors affecting morbidity in a forest. Under relatively benign disturbance regimes, mortality occurs at low background rates, but these can be exceeded by more massive pulses of mortality and dieback, and that is a major concern in our climate change era. An interesting innovation in analyzing tree mortality by these authors is the concept of a “death funnel” in which a tree’s risk of death increases as it descends down the funnel, becoming more susceptible to potential mortality agents. The gloomy prospect of the Sierra’s impressive forests descending the death funnel is somewhat leavened by the stories of gigantic trees that have been documented from the past, and many that survive or are even being newly discovered. Robert Van Pelt’s article, “Revisiting California’s Big Trees: A Selective History,” triggers at least a modicum of optimism while at the same time documenting the tragic extractive history that has removed many of these giants from our midst. Van Pelt’s article reminds us that California is home to the largest, tallest, and oldest trees that inhabit this planet, including the largest individuals of five conifer genera: a pine and four members of the cypress family. It was, in fact, some of these giant trees that inspired the birth of an ethos of conservation in the state, a heritage highlighted by last year’s centennial celebration of the founding of Save The Redwoods League. In her interview with editor David Loeb, that venerable organization’s science director, Emily Burns, discusses the group’s Centennial Vision, giving us reason to hope that our optimism will not itself go down a death funnel. But, again, it is the stories of some of the less well-known California conifers that this issue of Fremontia seeks to bring to the fore. Such as the whitebark pine. A fruitful collaboration of plant and animal biologists has identified and clarified the coevolved mutualism of whitebark pine and Clark’s nutcracker. Briefly stated, the pine provides high-energy nutrition (seeds rich in fats and protein) to the nutcracker, and the nutcracker shallowly caches in the soil those seeds it does not immediately eat, making them available for later seedling recruitment.
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