California Soils and Plants Guide: Serpentine, Vernal Pools & Geobotanical Wonders (Vol. 86) - California Natural History Series | Perfect for Botanists, Ecologists & Nature Enthusiasts
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Product Description
Carnivorous pitcher plants, pygmy conifers, and the Tiburon jewel flower, restricted to a small patch of serpentine soil on Tiburon Peninsula in Marin County, are just a few of California's many amazing endemic plants―species that are unique to particular locales. California boasts an abundance of endemic plants precisely because it also boasts the richest geologic diversity of any place in North America, perhaps in the world. In lively prose, Arthur Kruckeberg gives a geologic travelogue of California's unusual soils and land forms and their associated plants―including serpentines, carbonate rocks, salt marshes, salt flats, and vernal pools―demonstrating along the way how geology shapes plant life. Adding a fascinating chapter to the story of California's remarkable biodiversity, this accessible book also draws our attention to the pressing need for conservation of the state's many rare and fascinating plants and habitats. *148 outstanding, accurate photographs, more than 100 incolor, illustrate California's diverse flora *Covers a wide range of locations including the Channel Islands, the Central Valley, wetlands, bristlecone pine forests, and bogs and fens *Provides selected trip itineraries for viewing the state's geobotanical wonders *Includes information on human influences on the California landscape from the early Spanish explores through the gold rush and to the present
Customer Reviews
Although serpentine is the most famous example, amongst the generally "zonal" soils of the young but unglaciated "lower" Enriched World, there are a number of other quite distinctive soils created from the region's intense orogeny, especially in California and the Mediterranean region. These regions provide the most unique biodiversity north of the humid tropics, especially in terms of plant and amphibian species.The American West in general is a region of remarkable variety for its size, ranging from the eroded Colorado Plateau to the young and glaciated Cascade volcanoes, and from the almost "deep southern" social system of the Pinyon Jay to the extremely advanced hunter-gatherer societies fed by the extremely fertile seas of the Pacific Northwest. Corresponding to this is, as Kruckenberg outlines in "Introduction to California Soils and Plants: Serpentine, Vernal Pools, and Other Geobotanical Wonders" is a great variety of rock types, which in unglaciated areas can produce a surprising diversity of plant species adapted to them. Apart from serpentine, such areas include limestone, salt-affected soils and the ephemeral vernal pools that form during especially wet winters in the southern part of the state.Kruckenberg, as in his book on serpentines in California, looks in detail at the factors that cause azonal rock types to exclude most plants, including the carbonate rocks of eastern California and the relic Ione paleosol - which like the Pinyon Jay, can in some ways seem familiar to a person from my native Australia where most soils are so old as to be effectively azonal. The desert dunes, which I have never looked at, also seem very impressive with some unusual root parasites.All in all, however, what is most impressive about "Introduction to California Soils and Plants: Serpentine, Vernal Pools, and Other Geobotanical Wonders (California Natural History Guides)" is how well Kruckenberg depicts all the unique plants of California, as well as some exceptionally spectacular scenery. The pictures alone would be enough to recommend the book, but it is the combination with exceptionally accessible and detailed information about the flora that makes "Introduction to California Soils and Plants: Serpentine, Vernal Pools, and Other Geobotanical Wonders" such a good book to read.
