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Zusatztext "An important synthesis illuminating the diversity and beauty of the original herbaceous vegetation of southern California." Informationen zum Autor Richard A. Minnich is Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California! Riverside. He is author of The Biogeography of Fire in the San Bernadino Mountains of California: A Historical Survey and Land of Chamise and Pines: Historical Descriptions of Northern Baja California (both from UC Press). Klappentext "Much more than a lament for a vanishing landscape! California's Fading Wildflowers is a meticulously researched and compelling revision of the Golden State's ecological history from the pre-colonial era to the present."-Louis S. Warren! editor! American Environmental History "A wonderful achievement. . . . An incredibly rich synthesis of history! plant geography! and landscape ecology! which Richard Minnich uses to describe a place-coastal and interior California-that within 200 years experienced one of the most complete human-caused landscape transformations in the world."-Michael Barbour! University of California! Davis Zusammenfassung Offers a historical analysis of the transformation of California's wildflower prairies. This book challenges the thinking on the subject, evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape and instead arguing that wildflowers filled this role. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface 1. The Golden State 2. Pre-Hispanic Herbaceous Vegetation 3. Invasion of Franciscan Annuals! Grazing! and California Pasture in the Nineteenth Century 4. A Century of Bromes and the Fading of California Wildflowers 5. Lessons from the Rose Parade Appendix 1. Location of Franciscan campsites! Franciscan place names! and modern place names Appendix 2. Spanish plant names for California vegetation Appendix 3. Selected earliest botanical collections of exotic annual species in California Appendix 4. References to wildflowers in the Los Angeles Times! The Desert Magazine! and the Riverside Press Enterprise ...
