Natural History Journal

California is exemplified by many different landscapes: its sunny beaches, rolling vineyards, granite mountain cathedrals, and vibrant cities, to name a few.  But it is also home to a wide array of forests, which contain a few of the world's most amazing types of plants.  To me, it wouldn't be California without the trees! While California's Coast Redwoods  ( Sequoia sempervirens ) have earned the title of the world's tallest trees, and Giant Sequoias ( Sequoiadendron giganteum ) of the Sierra Nevada are the world's most massive, hands down the winner for the world's oldest trees - and indeed the world's oldest living single organism - goes to the White Mountains' ancient Great Basin Bristlecone Pines ( Pinus longaeva ). While bristlecone pines are found across the Great Basin in parts of Nevada and Utah, the oldest specimens, many of which exceed 3,000 years, grow in the harsh conditions of eastern California's White Mountains.  The Methusel...

Within South Carolina's Sandhills region, which separates the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the east from the Piedmont Plateau to the west, lies a forest, not of typical eastern hardwoods, but of pines. For a Californian like me, pines are generally associated with mountains.  But that is not the case for much of the United States.  Forests of Longleaf Pine ( Pinus palustris ) once covered over 90 million acres, stretching across the southeastern United States from Virginia to Texas.  Today, these forests remain only in scattered patches, amounting to around two or three million acres. Traveling between friends in Florence, South Carolina, and relatives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Eric and I charted a meandering course that took us through a few key sites of particular interest (to us): the Longleaf Pine forests of the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge for me, Cowpens and Kings Mountain National Military Parks for Eric, and the Camden Battlefield and Long...

Ah, the swamp.  A stinky, mucky, oozy, icky, bug-infested no-man's land, brimming with creepy crawlies and things you'd never want to run into at night.  A place no one wants to visit; a land without use or purpose.  Right? Wrong. Entirely wrong. (Except for the part about being bug-infested.  That part might be true.*) Eric and I recently returned home from visiting friends, family and a slew of historic sites in the Carolinas and Virginia.  We hiked in gloriously verdant forests, birded in exceedingly productive wetlands, swam in the balmy Atlantic, and toured a plethora of places brimming with history: two plantations, five Revolutionary War battlefields, four Civil War battlefields, two forts, and two historic Colonial settlements.  (Aside: I cannot recommend a visit to Colonial Williamsburg and Historic Jamestowne highly enough!!) Perhaps most significantly (for me), we experienced South Carolina's swamps. Swamps, like all other wetlands...

Autumn might just be my favorite season in the Sierra Nevada. Maybe. Gone are summer's long, lazy days of exploring creeks in cutoffs and swimming in mountain lakes. But I'll make the exchange, for golden leaves swirling on the breeze and crunching underfoot, chilly nights with starry skies, cozy flannel shirts and woolly mittens holding warm beverages around the campfire... We spent last weekend on the Eastern side of the Sierra, taking in the sights and reveling in the beauty of the season. And I can safely say, fall is in full swing: now is the time to get out and see the fall colors! California is known as the golden state for the obvious reason: gold was discovered here, triggering a booming gold rush during the mid-to-late 1800's. But I'd like to add a few more of my own reasons for the nickname. In spring, golden carpets of wildflowers spread across hills and valleys in varying hues: California poppies, goldfields, tidytips and their yellow compo...

In some parts of the world, magical places really do exist.  Glittering snowcapped peaks ,  oasis pools of turquoise  and ferny fairylands are all out there, just waiting to be discovered!    A couple of weeks ago while exploring the Morro Bay area with my mom (visiting that part of the state for my cousin's wedding), we came across an enchanted place unlike any other: El Moro Elfin Forest.   The Elfin Forest While there are no actual elves, fairies, pixies, dryads, or other small woodland folk inhabiting this forest (that we saw), the miniature woodland is certainly possessed by its own type of botanical enchantment.  The landscape is filled with an abundance of flowering jewels (wildflowers and flowering shrubs), fluttering gems (butterflies and birds)... and beautifully sculpted dwarf trees, for which the forest is named.  Though the graceful forms of dwarfed Coast Liv...