PLS 147 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Wildflower, Poaceae, Forb
California Valley Grasslands: a murder mystery ?!?!!?
annual: life cycle lasts only one year (completely turns to seeds and needs to be replanted)
perennial: grows every spring, doesn't completely die after 1 year
grassland:
prairie:
The Great Valley
Native Prairie
was it perennial
grasses or annual
forbs?
a plant community dominated by grasses (herbaceous layer only)
● grass: member of the plant family Poaceae
a plant community dominated by non-woody plants (grasses and
forbs) (herbaceous layer only)
● forb: non-woody, non-grass ("wildflower")
Drainages
● dominated by big rivers
● drains four ranges
○ Klamath, Transverse, Sierra Nevada, Coast ranges
● snowmelt → deposits sediments
● water causes it to flood
● some probably characterized by Valley Oak woodlands
● over 30,000 sq miles 200 years ago
● today, less than 1% today because it is good agricultural
land
○ no good botanical records of species composition.
● early botanists assumed original vegetation was perennial
bunch grassland
○ because of its location, usually grass prairies
(wasn't woody, desert, etc)
● forblands?
○ relic fragments are dominated by perennial grasslands,
but early accounts also describe a "bed" of annual
wildflowers, "not grasses" - john muir
○ areas with high disturbance may have been dominated
by native annual forbs
Historical Ecology
● use of historical records to recreate vanished or altered
ecological landscapes
○ maps, photographs, land records, diaries and other
written accounts, artwork, poetry, songs, oral history
● Deciphering Spanish accounts
○ early Spanish explorers (1769-1806) before invasives
took over
■ most accounts only really describe if good for
farm or cows to eat
○ Richard Minnich: "zacate" vs "pasto" (grass vs pasture)
○ often say it was barren in the summer ("barren" is
subjective, like how Euros said tall grasslands was
