Kmarianchild

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals among California’s Oaks by Kate Marianchild   Excerpts from the manzanita chapter   “Manzanita first appears in the fossil record about 37 million years ago in central California. About 1.5 million years ago it began diversifying and dispersing to places throughout the West and as far away as Guatemala and Eurasia. Not surprisingly, the central California coast is the world hub of manzanita diversity. With an extraordinary ability to adapt to unusual habitats, the sixty-two-odd Arctostaphylos species come in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes, from two-inch-high ground covers to tall shapely trees. Common manzanita and big berry manzanita, the two species discussed here, fit the genus’s popular image of a … Read more…

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals among California’s Oaks by Kate Marianchild   Excerpts from the western gray squirrel chapter   When you see swaying branches high in the oak canopy on a windless fall day, prepare to watch heart-stopping acrobatics. A western gray squirrel may be bounding from branch to branch sixty or eighty feet overhead. These daring gymnasts sometimes leap across twenty-foot chasms to land on finger-sized twigs that careen wildly under their weight and occasionally break. Other times the graceful athletes seem to float through the treetops, shining tails undulating like waves behind them. (p. 161) Marvelous multipurpose tails The tails of western gray squirrels serve at least eleven purposes, probably more. When one of … Read more…

Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals among California’s Oaks by Kate Marianchild   Excerpts from the woodrat chapter   “Once upon an epoch, perhaps three million years ago, a storm-swollen stream tugged a log from a section of bank, leaving a mother woodrat and her newborns exposed and shivering with cold. With four babies clinging to her nipples, the mother scuttled away from the stream to the base of a boulder. Using her teeth, she pulled a few dead branches over herself and her infants, warming and hiding them. One baby eventually died of cold and two were eaten by rattlesnakes, but the one who survived imitated her mother and pulled a few sticks over her own babies … Read more…