FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE

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WOODY PLANTS AT EDGEWOOD

By Toni Corelli

Woody plant communities dominate about half of Edgewood (EW) as shown on vegetation maps. The woody plant communities at EW include live oak woodland, foothill woodland, mixed evergreen woodland, chamise chaparral, mixed serpentine chaparral, mixed northern coastal scrub, and riparian woodland.

Our non-woodland communities include serpentine grassland, non-serpentine grassland, and the wet meadow communities. The herbaceous plant life forms include annuals, biennials, and herbaceous perennials (non-woody).

Edgewood woody plant life forms can be grouped into trees, shrubs, subshrubs, woody vines, and brambles:

• trees have one erect trunk and have a height of 4 meters (~13 feet) or more
• shrubs are multistemmed at the base and are mostly shorter than 4 meters
• subshrubs are shrub-like, the lower stems are somewhat woody, the upper stems and twigs are less woody; the plant may die back seasonally (e.g. blue witch, golden-yarrow, sticky monkeyflower)
• vines are trailing or climbing woody plants (e.g. Virgin’s bower and hairy honeysuckle)
• brambles have arching branches and do not usually climb up on surrounding vegetation (e.g. blackberries)

The total number of plants classified as woody plants at EW is 84. This represents 17% of the 481 plants that are listed in the Edgewood Flora. However, the number of herbaceous plant species, 397, or 83%, far outnumbers the woody plant species at EW. As shown in Table 1, the total percentage of woody plants is higher at EW than the percentage of woody plants found in the Santa Cruz Mts. (SCR Mts.).

The herbaceous plants are much more diverse than the woody plants and are well represented in the grasslands and meadow habitats and in the herbaceous understory layer of the woody plant communities.

Woody Plants vs. Area

Per Table 2, EW has 41% of the total woody plant species that occur in the SCR Mts. This is high since EW only represents approximately 0.05% of the total land within the SCR Mts.

Non-Native vs. Native Woody Plants

The Edgewood Flora indicates that 21% of the woody plants at EW are non-native compared to 15% for the SCR Mts. See Table 3.

Non-indigenous woody plants found at EW are California native plants that do not occur there naturally. They were probably planted at EW:

The 10 most invasive non-native woody plants at EW are:

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the woody plant communities that occupy 50% of the area at EW contain only 17% of the total woody plant species represented at Edgewood. The herbaceous plant species (83%) far outnumber the woody plant species and are well represented in all of the natural plant communities at Edgewood.

Maps Viewable on Web Site

Several maps of Edgewood are available for viewing from the Friends of Edgewood website, http://www.friendsofedgewood.org.

You can view the EW vegetation map at  http://www.friendsofedgewood.org/egis/maps/Vegetation.pdf.

For an aerial view go to http://www.friendsofedgewood.org/maps/satellite.jpg.

References

Corelli, T. (2004) Flowering Plants of Edgewood Natural Preserve Second Edition.

Corelli, T. (2005) Illustrated Field Guide to the Woody Plants of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Stuart, J.D., Sawyer, J.O. (2001) Trees and Shrubs of California; Illustrated by Andrea J. Pickart. University of California Press, Berkeley, California.

Thomas, J.H. (1961) Flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

Friends of Edgewood web page: http://www.friendsofedgewood.org/.

Send mail to wm at this domain with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 1999 - 2008 Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve. Last modified: January 20, 2008.