At the risk of boring the behinds off my faithful readers, I feel compelled to tell everything I’ve learned (not so much, as it turns out) about native plants, and why the state agency (which will remain nameless herein) is so exercised about them. I promise not to mention the dreaded document (in legal limbo, for now) by which the Malibu landscape might be forever changed.
I have poured over this document (the one with the same initials as Lovely Coastal Plants and Local Useless Prattle) for hours, and all I got was an Excedrin headache and terminal fanny fatigue. Such documents have more redundancies than the average doctoral thesis and are marginally less readable.
What I did learn, I think, is that the chances of the plant police raiding your garden and ripping out your rosebushes are slim and none. Unless they are spitting distance from an area designated as “sensitive” (same initials as Entirely Sucky Housing Area) and you are planning to add a broom closet to your home, which probably shouldn’t have been built there in the first place.
Are you still with me?
This business of racial purification is left to the vagaries of what may or may not be “native” flora. Finding no such enlightenment in the document, I decided to go to the experts at the California Native Plant Society, which hosts a native plant sale in Malibu each spring and last weekend at the Sepulveda Garden Center, a magnificent community garden made up of small plots planted and tended by local residents who have no backyard. Most of these weekend gardeners grow flowers and vegetables and seem not to give a fig about indigenous plants. Native schmative.
The folks from the plant society, on the other hand, are avid protectors of all plants that were here when European explorers arrived.
“But plants that were brought by humans since Columbus are not native, no matter what,” said Steve Hartman, local chapter treasurer.
Naturalized citizens need not apply.
“Certain plants do naturalize, but that doesn’t make them native,” he said.
I assume this applies to the yellow-flowered Scotch Broom that has taken hold along Kanan Road.
There are certain plants that nobody really knows how or when they got here. And some that are cosmopolitan that occur all over the world. There are also a variety of plants that are native to both Chile and California. Those are thought to have been transported by birds that migrate along that route and tend to stop over in vernal pools.
Birds eat seeds, some of which are indigestible and come out looking just as they went in except that they have a coating of fertilizer to help them take root in their new home. It is unclear whether the resulting immigrants would be deported. Or given green cards.
Can you hear me now? Good.
The other factor that is broadening the gene pool of native flora is the propagation of native plants by commercial growers. They’ve produced cultivars of ceanothus (mountain lilac), for example, that grow well along the coast but don’t do as well in the inland valleys. Carmel Creeper and Julia Phelps are just two smashingly beautiful and useful examples of this process. Their lineage is not in question.
But even landscape architects who promote native plants hold different views about propagating cultivars.
“Some people say it pollutes the gene pool and others say you’re strengthening it,” Hartman said. “But you’re doing yourself a favor if you propagate plants from areas adjacent to your property, because those are proven to survive in your climate and soil.”
You can take seeds from fading flowers, but cutting or digging up plants from public land (or your neighbor’s) is a big no-no. I plan to pinch a few seeds from some spectacular bush sunflowers growing beside my local access road. Failing that, I may buy some from Bob Sussman’s Matilija Nursery in Moorpark (formerly of Malibu). He has a list of native plants suited to higher elevations, which I consult regularly.
Hartman doesn’t consider himself a purist, and like landscape architect Jay Griffiths (of Venice and Malibu), uses a mix of plants grouped by their water needs.
“Many non-native plants aren’t invasive and aren’t a threat to native landscapes,” he said. “And in urban gardens, who cares?”
But where invasives were planted near streams and wetlands, like kudzu in the Everglades, they took over and choked out native plants.
“There have been a lot of mistakes made,” he said.
The CNPS list of plants native to the Santa Monica Mountains was edited by Betsey Landis who says the state agency (here nameless) uses it for reference in the dreaded document.
“I think they were more concerned about the ‘weeds’ than the list of native plants,” Landis said.
They call all invasive exotics (ivy, ice plant, fennel, nasturtium) weeds. State biologists tend to hyperventilate at the mention of these prolific invaders.
Nasturtium, in fact, is a miracle of plant evolution with a seed the size of a golf ball. As kindergartners at Miss Buckley’s, we grew them in dirt-filled Dixie cups. Ours thrived with only a spit of moisture and have probably taken over Beverly Hills. If you harbor these edible flowering vines, the nasturtium Nazis may invade your space and rip them out by the roots.
Other than that, the biologists mean us no harm. They’re just trying to protect our wild creatures and the plants that sustain them. If they have to deport a few illegal aliens, well, this is California.
For a copy of the native plant list, send a $4 check to CNPS and your address to Betsey Landis, 3908 Mandeville Cyn. Rd., L.A. 90049.