June 2012 NATIVE GARDEN TOUR CHAPTER MEETING A HUGE SUCCESS!!! Tuesday, June 19; 7 p.m. The San Diego Native Garden Tour on April 28th and Room 104, Casa del Prado 29th, hosted by the California Native Plant Society San Balboa Park Diego Chapter and Hunter Industries, was a smashing success! 550 people attended the event and several thousand dollars were raised for the chapter's Border Field State Park conservation activities. In addition to the 15 Garden Committee members who devoted hundreds of hours Habitat Restoration over the preceeding year, organizers of the tour also recruited 85 volunteer docents. The tour's volunteers Presentation by Phillip Roullard included UC Master Gardeners, landscape architects and designers, wildlife biologists, students from High Tech The presentation gives a brief history of the impacts that High, and many CNPS members. Tour Director Clayton have occurred at Border Field State Park from natural Tschudy and Tour Board Representative Susan influences, agriculture, the military and DHS Krzywicki wish to thank the many volunteers who made infrastructure construction projects. Using aerial images this event possible. and images that illustrate the above impacts, a short explanation is given as to what events have led to the alteration of the habitat at Border Field and what has and is being done in order to restore the habitat of a five acre parcel of land with native plants using community sourced volunteer labor. Presenter, Phillip Roullard, has worked for California State Parks for the last 11 years. For the last six years, Phil has worked at Border Field State Park removing invasive plants, then restoring habitat by revegetating with native plants. Pre-meeting Natives for Novices at 6:30 p.m. Scott Jones will present plantscape-matchup design ideas using native and endemic plants of the So. Calif. islands. All plants Native Landscape Service Providers considered will be those that maintain a relatively fresh and lively year-round appearance. The Chapter is updating its listings of native landscape 7:00 p.m. – refreshments, book browsing, socializing. service providers on its website. Nurseries, landscape 7:30 p.m. – presentation. designers, landscape contractors, or landscape architects who use California native plants in their projects and who Chapter meetings are free and open to the public. They are held rd want to be included on the Chapter website, please email a the 3 Tuesday of each month (except August) in the Casa del Prado Room 104, just west of the San Diego Natural History paragraph with your business information to: MuseumFIRST in Balboa ANNUAL Park. CNPS-SD [email protected] BOARD MEETING Ultimately, though, we have to work on climate change, because that is certainly affecting native plants. If we're going to protest every solar, wind, natural gas, nuclear plant, and Wednesday, June 6, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m., monthly CNPS transmission line, where are we getting our power from? Coal San Diego Chapter board meeting to be held at 4010 Morena plants in Baja? Ask every homeowner and renter in San Diego Blvd, Suite 100, San Diego (Thomas Guide 1248 C4). Exit I- to spend $30,000 for a rooftop solar array? Figuring out what 5 to Balboa Dr. east and turn north on Morena Drive. Proceed we can say yes to is part of CNPS' mission, too, one that gets 1/2 mile and make a u-turn at the Avati Street signal and turn handled on the state level as well as in our chapter. Climate into the driveway for 4010. Drive to the parking lot on the change is a key issue for CNPS, and saying no to that is no west side (away from Morena). Members are welcome to longer an option. And it's not a simple issue. attend as observers. If you want to discuss an issue, please ask to get on the agenda by sending an email to This is a bit of a negative article, so I'll finish on a geeky note. I [email protected]. was recently reading William DeBuy's excellent A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. He makes many valuable points, but the one I'd like to highlight here is an alternative for the term global warming: global weirding. The point is that, as more heat gets trapped in our atmosphere, it won't simply drive up CONSERVATION temperatures. All that heat causes air to absorb more water Plant Conservation and move faster, so as the concentrations of greenhouse gases goes up, we should see bigger storms, deeper droughts, Doing conservation work for the California Native Plant stronger winds, flashier floods, and faster changes among Society has some interesting limitations. Even though I have these states. DeBuys says that some climate scientists prefer been doing this for a while now, I'm still learning, especially in "global weirding" to "global warming." As we go into the the last few months. summer, you can contemplate the idea that things may get progressively weirder from here on out, and not just in One issue that I hadn't properly processed until very recently is politics. that CNPS status as a non-profit limits what we can do. ~ Frank Landis, Conservation Committee Chair According to the IRS, we are "absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." This becomes even TECOLOTE CANYON trickier in today's obsessively partisan political environment, where so many activists focus on how issues affect campaigns. NATURAL PARK Ultimately, we can't publically endorse one candidate over July 1; 9 a.m. to noon. A another. relaxed opportunity to learn plant lore of this coastal natural reserve from a CNPS Rather than campaigning for particular politicians, CNPS member. Meet at the Tecolote Nature Center. Wear sun campaigns for native plants and works on the issues that affect protection and comfortable walking shoes, bring water. them. This focus gives us some status, but it also limits us in Rain at 8 a.m. cancels the walk Directions: exit I-5 at some fairly critical ways. For one, I have to remember Seaworld/Tecolote exit. Go east (away from Mission Bay) periodically we're not general purpose environmentalists. We on Tecolote, past the ball fields, along the driveway to the do participate in the general environmental community, very end. Free and open to the public, and parking is also because many issues (habitat loss, climate change, and free. The walk is repeated the first Sunday of each development) affect everything, including plants. Still, we get asked to carry water on a number of issues that are peripheral month. (No walk at this location in June 2012) to our core mission. Sometimes we can help, sometimes we can't. This issue has come up repeatedly with proposed power plants, whether they are powered by wind, solar power, or natural gas. Wind turbines cause problems for anyone living near them, and they kill many birds and bats. Fortunately or unfortunately, wind turbines aren't that destructive to native plants (unless one explodes and starts a fire), so CNPS isn't one of the major players in the fights around new wind farms. Big Desert Solar can be a huge problem, since solar plants require that the ground be scraped bare, and they can suck a lot of water out of precious desert aquifers. Some solar plants are being sited in high quality native plant areas, and we're fighting them. Some power plants don't cause much harm to native plants, and there's little we protest about them. This Bush poppy (Dendromecon rigida) seen during the galls people who are against some particular power plant and Native Garden Tour. Photo by Bobbie Stephenson looking for allies, but we are limited in what we do. 2 Members’ Field Trips Ancient Tecate Cypresses of Some Headwater Drainages of the Guatay Mountain Proposed Eagle Peak Wilderness (This trip was postponed twice due to rainstorms) Sunday, June 17, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Sunday, June 10, 9:00 a.m. – 2:oo p.m. Leader: Cindy Buxton Leader: Bob Greenberg. CNPS members and their guests will get to see the oldest CNPS members (and their guests) are invited to hike to and highest elevation stand of Tecate cypress view areas within the IRA's (Inventoried Roadless Areas) of (Hesperocyparis forbesii) known: at least 145 years old at the Cleveland National Forest’s proposed Eagle Peak an elevation of 4,000-4,500 ft. The mature trees appear Wilderness. These wild areas have not reached dedication healthy and vigorous, with lots of cones of various ages. as wilderness over the past decade, while threats to the The field trip will be a 5.2-mile round trip hike through integrity of the land have grown. Very few botanists have old growth chaparral, including redshank (Adenostoma collected in this area, and finding special species will only sparsifolium), manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.), mountain help the case for the importance of protection, via the mahogany (Cercocarpus spp.) and creeping sage (Salvia Wilderness dedication process if possible. sonomensis) - at least 100 plant taxa have been identified in the vicinity. The route is an unmarked moderately We will be on a dirt road from which we will make short strenuous trail with a 1,600-foot elevation gain and hikes for panoramic views of the IRA, and then will park loss, suitable for experienced and fit hikers only. We'll go and follow several small trails through oak woodland, slowly, looking at plants (and resting!)...so we may take 4-5 riparian areas and meadows.