Joshua Siskin travels up north and gets some perspective on Southern California plants.
Travel is always a gratifying experience for us plant lovers because of the many opportunities to learn something new about the botanical world. Not only are we introduced to plants that don’t grow in our climate, but we also see familiar plants in a new light when we find them thriving in locations where the conditions for growth are so much different from our own.
Yet there is one important limiting factor to growth that these maps don’t acknowledge and that is humidity. This is amply illustrated if you spend a day in Seattle followed by a day in Juneau, Alaska, as I recently did. In both Seattle and Juneau, are thriving in full-sun locations whereas, in our climate, full-day sun burns the foliage of these trees.
It should also be mentioned here that sometimes it’s a lack of cold that diminishes a plant’s performance. The vast majority of sweet cherry, apple, and pear tree varieties, for example, will not produce fruit in Southern California because our winters are not cold enough for flowers to develop and where there are no flowers there is no fruit.
In Juneau, I spotted three ground covers that are seldom seen in our area although they deserve wider use. The first was moneywort , named for the fact that its roundish leaves suggest coins. This is a species that grows rampantly in the shade with yellow flowers one-inch in size. The variety I saw looked like ‘Aurea,’ whose foliage is a shimmering golden color.
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