Megalodon: An ancient shark that makes the Great White Shark look small

Written February 4, 2013, published March 2013.  Photos of teeth from a private collection, all photos by Kathleen Sayce.

Many animals that formerly lived on earth have modern analogs, animals living today that look and behave very like those ancient animals, though they might not be direct descendants. It’s as though the giant cats, bears, wolves, and sharks of the world recur again and again, slightly reconfigured each time. One ancient mega-tooth shark, Megalodon (mega for big, odon for tooth) has a small analog in the great white shark. 

Great White Sharks are big as predatory sharks get today, growing to twenty feet long, weighing up to 4,200 pounds (2.1 short tons). [Some older records of much larger Great Whites are based on inferences of size and not direct measurements.] Body shape and weight of these sharks help estimate the size of fossil Megalodon skeletons. Compared to Megalodon, they are in the second tier for size: Megalodon grew to 67 feet long, and a weight of 114 short tons. 

Megalodon lived from the late Oligocene (28 million years ago) into the start of the Pleistocene (2 million years ago), for 26 million years. Great Whites first appeared during the mid Miocene, so both species overlapped for millions of years. Even when young, Megalodon Sharks were so much larger that Great Whites were probably prey. They ate fish and marine mammals when small, but when more than 40 feet long probably had to shift to whales to get enough protein with each meal. Fossil whale bones have been found with Megalodon tooth marks on them. In some cases, the sharks simply bit the whales in half. Megalodon jaws were up to seven feet wide when open, large enough for a tall man to stand inside, so they could easily catch and eat whales.  Today, a Great White Shark can eat a Harbor Seal in two or three bites. The equivalent for an adult Megalodon was eating a Gray Whale in two or three bites. 

Fossil Megalodon teeth have a characteristic wide triangular shape and serrated edge. All were collected near Bakersfield, Cal. and are in a private collection. 

Megalodon teeth were known long before skeletal fossils were found. Sharks grow many teeth over each life, growing, shedding and replacing them continuously, several hundred teeth per shark. Already hard, teeth easily fossilize, and can be found millions of years later. Megalodon teeth are large, up to seven inches from base to tip, and serrated to improve slicing ability. They turn up in rocks, in marine sediments, and in soils all over the world. Initially they were thought to be fossil dragon or snake tongues, and were called glossopetrae, or tongue stones.  During the late Renaissance a Danish naturalist named Nicolaus Steno correctly identified these as fossil shark teeth. 

From these widespread fossils, found all over the world, we know that Megalodon were cosmopolitan, living throughout the world’s oceans. Like all top predators, their presence determined the structure of the marine communities in which they fed. As they grew, they moved from small to large fish, to marine mammals like seals and porpoises, and then to larger and larger whales. 

This Megalodon tooth is almost five inches wide and tall; the largest teeth known for this species are seven inches tall. Next to it, a fossil Mako shark tooth is two inches tall. Great White Sharks have teeth similar in size to Makos, up to two and one half inches tall. 

The first glacial maximum of the Pleistocene, with shrinking oceans, falling sea levels, and expanding ice sheets, also reduced whale populations due to changes in nutrient cycling that affected the entire food web. These changes left large Megalodon adults starved for food, and impacted the warm shallow seas where juvenile Megalodon lived. Many shallow seas simply drained away as more and more water was locked up on land in continental and montane glaciers. Great White Sharks, being much smaller, with less than one third the length and one fiftieth the body mass of Megalodon, adapted to these changes and survived in colder oceans with smaller prey.   

A small tooth (1.5 inches wide) shows the serrated tooth edge that is distinctive to Megalodon, and which gave it good slashing ability. 

The tooth that was photographed for this article came from California, and was found east of Bakersfield by a private collector. At one time the area was a large shallow sea, and it is known for a large variety of marine fossils. So far as I know, Megalodon fossils have not yet been found in Pacific County. If someone has a Megalodon tooth from this area, I would like to know about it, and I promise to keep your name out of the paper. 

However, we can deduce the historic presence of this great mega-tooth shark without local fossils.  For many millions of years this area was under water, first as deep ocean and later as an ever shallower warm sea.  Megalodon Sharks swam over this part of the planet for millions of years. We see modern Great White Sharks as awesome for their size, speed and predatory behavior. Yet Megalodon was a shark that other sharks avoided, including Great Whites, because they too were food for this top predator. 

Roof residents, or where green is not necessarily good

Written January 21, 2013, published in late January, 2013, all photos by Kathleen Sayce

Several species arrive quickly on suitable roofs, starting with algae and bacteria. Algae are tiny plants that are so small and light that their spores blow through the air. These come in several colors, including green, red, orange and golden brown, and also live on trees. Black stains on asphalt shingle roofs are usually photosynthetic bacteria, as are olive brown globs and bubbles that can make the roof appear to be buried in gelatinous slime. 

Two species of moss share space on an asphalt roof with a brown-black cyanobacteria, Nostoc commune. The mosses are seen year round; this bacteria appears in late fall on suitable roofs. 

Lichens and mosses soon follow, and are also tree inhabitants. Lichens may be inconspicuous for a couple of years before they are big enough to form more than a thin gray or black film, but mosses go from thin green films to tidy clumps in one year.  The moment mosses form moisture-holding tufts of green, gray, gold and silver, worms and other invertebrates arrive to live under them. Have you ever seen a crow walking a gutter or a roof, turning over moss clumps? That crow is hunting for juicy protein-rich worms. Tiny beetles, other insects, springtails, millipedes, tardigrades, isopods and other tiny animals also live in the mosses, and yes, these species also live on trees. 

Two mosses grow together on a roof. One is starting to produce spores (the red stalks will grow spores in a few weeks); this is a cosmopolitan moss, Ceratodon purpureum. 

Roof occupancy does not stop at algae, lichens and mosses, and invertebrates. As leaf litter builds, humus forms on roofs and in gutters, and ferns and plants with seeds that float in the air show up.  On well-mossed roofs I’ve seen massive clumps of Licorice Fern (Polypodium glycrrhiza), along with Willowherbs, Cat’s-ear and Dandelion. These plants all have seeds or spores that float on the air, so it’s no surprise that they are easily lofted to a roof. Sitka spruce and red alder have seeds with small wings that blow on the wind, as I realized the year I pulled five spruce seedlings from a gutter full of compost.  In my defense, I’d sprained an ankle the prior summer, and did not climb ladders for more than a year. That was all it took to fill the gutters with conifer needles, for those needles to form compost, and for spruce seeds to arrive and germinate. 

Cyanobacteria, Nostoc commune, forms thick gelatinous masses on roofs among leaf litter and moss patches. 

For heavier seeds, there are birds to carry seeds; they eat the fruits and poop the seeds out high in trees, on favorite perches by bird baths, and on roofs. On a well-thatched roof, thick with natural leaf litter and mosses, grow holly, ivy, blackberry, elderberry, black currant, trailing currant, salmonberry, thimbleberry,  and twinberry, to name just a few local species that often end up on poorly tended roofs. 

This healthy clump of moss had three worms living beneath it when it was turned over. 

Why cleaning is necessary

Mosses have small proto-roots that exude weak acids to eat into bark and help anchor the plant. These same acids eat into and through asphalt and wood shingle roofs, which unlike trees don’t keep growing new surfaces under the bark. The roof dissolution process takes years; eventually, the shingle is riddled with holes. Now, when it rains, the water drains into the building instead of down the roof to the gutters. Wood fungi, termites and carpenter ants take up occupancy in the damp wood under the roof. At that point, your house is toast, unless you replace the roof and rebuild damaged structural elements.  

Birds don’t help, either. Where birds like to congregate, bird poop falls, and this feeds plants. A favorite roof-roost for pigeons, for example, will grow impressive moss and lichen patches down slope from the roost. Bird poop is corrosive, and will help roofing material surfaces to break down quickly. There are many devices to keep birds from settling on roofs:  Rows of ridgetop spikes and spines; rolls of spiky-spiny wire; long flexible wire spines to go between standing seams on metal roofs; bird-scarers, like large plastic owls; and whirly-gigs with bright reflective sections. 

The simplest way to reduce these problems on roofs is to not let them start:  Keep the roof clean; every year or two clean it off.  Don’t forget walls, window frames, decks and steps. These species aren’t fussy; they’ll grow anywhere there’s enough moisture, and too little disturbance. If you want your roof to last, mosses, leaf litter, and their companions have to go. 

Some people clean during the dry season, others during the wet season. My father waited to clean gutters during the first rains each fall. As a child, I thought everyone cleaned gutters in the rain. I prefer midsummer myself, when the roof is dry and the air is warm. Some people put down copper or zinc flashing or spread zinc powder; these metal salts are toxic to mosses, lichens and algae. As metal salts wash down the roof, they kill the plants and fungi. Others wash roofs, and then during the dry season, spray on a layer of detergent. The detergent kills germinating spores and young plants of algae, lichens and mosses. It must be redone every two or three years.  You still have to check gutters, downspouts, and subsurface storm drains, if you have these. 

No matter which method you use, be safe. Set ladders properly on level firm ground. Have a safety spotter on the ground. Don’t work on slippery wet roofs––wait for dry weather. If you must be on a roof when it’s wet, use a safety harness. Wear sturdy boots with gripping soles. Put the cell phone aside until you are back on the ground. Your reward is a roof that may last for most of its planned design life, instead of being replaced decades too soon. 

Broadening Organic: Nutrient Dense Foods

Written January 4, 2013, published in mid January 2013. All photos by Kathleen Sayce.

The debate about organic versus convention food production goes back and forth. One study says organically grown food is healthier. Another says there is no difference in nutritional value between organically- and conventionally-grown foods, except for the level of pesticides. No surprise, organic foods have lower pesticide levels. A third says that soil amendment costs are higher on conventional farms, lower on organic farms. Another says labor costs are higher on organic farms due to more hand weeding. Organic food gardens cost less to operate, because fewer amendments (fertilizers, pesticides) are used, and less water is needed. Conventional food gardens produce more food for lower labor costs, but at higher health risks for farm workers due to pesticide use. 

A refractometer with three kale samples, from left to right, Red Russian, Red Curly and Green Curly Kales. 

Food Quality

What’s a home gardener to conclude from this argument? I say:  Expand your definition of organic gardening and look at food quality, specifically at nutrient density:  What form of gardening produces the most nutrient dense food?  ‘Properly mineralized soil’ is the correct answer. This goes beyond avoiding crunchy, sugary, salty processed foods, as good as these taste, to plant and animal foods with high quantities of minerals, proteins, fats, sugars and secondary compounds. This is nutrient density, which we can measure, and more importantly, we can taste.  

Plants grown on optimally healthy soils have higher levels of dissolved solids and minerals in their intercellular sap than do those grown conventionally or on nutritionally out-of-balance soils, regardless of the management method for that soil. These plants are healthier, and their roots, fruits and leaves and stems, which we eat as foods, are more nutrient dense.  They deliver optimal food quality and flavor to us, the eaters.  Likewise, animals grazed on pastures managed for optimal nutritional health are healthier. 

A light orange carrot with mashed fresh carrot in cheesecloth, ready to measure the carrot's juice in the refractometer.

Nutrient Density

Density is measured as dissolved solids in plant juices using a refractometer, a centuries-old device that uses refraction of light to measure fluid concentrations in Brix units. A bar of color crosses a numerical scale; you read the number on the scale. This is the Brix of that solution.  In measures of plant sap quality, the higher the Brix, the better. 

Wine, cheese and juice makers use refractometers to measure Brix and determine ripeness in grapes, tomatoes, berries, and other fruits, because there is a strong correlation between the level of dissolved solids in intercellular sap, and the sugar levels and flavor of the fruit. They often eat the fruits to compare flavor to Brix units, calibrating their sense of taste to these measurements.  Yes, you can taste the differences. High Brix fruits have more flavor. I use my garlic press to mush fresh veggies, and a bit of cheesecloth to squeeze the juice from the crushed sample to test. 

Studies of food quality rarely include the Brix levels of plant saps. Those few studies that do so show that fruits, grains, seeds, and vegetables grown on healthy soils with optimal nutrient balances have higher Brix levels than do conventionally grown foods on unbalanced soils.  

A green curly kale sample in cheesecloth with bright green fresh juice.

Food Quality, Flavor and Health

As consumers of mass-produced foods, many of us have never tasted these flavor differences, due to lack of exposure to truly nutrient dense food. Bring on the compost, humus and biochar, and soil tests for minerals, so that we can determine exactly which minerals our vegetable gardens need. In a healthy soil with optimal levels of nutrients, all of those plants, including fruit vines and shrubs, peas, carrots, beans and even lettuces, will nosh in style, and deliver more nutrition and flavor.  

The result of eating plants grown with optimal soil nutrition is that we can be healthier. So step aside of the arguments about conventional versus organic, and go beyond, into an expanded definition of organic gardening with nutritionally complete soils, with regular soil tests, appropriate mineral supplements, and grow healthier plants. Get optimal flavor, high mineral levels, and higher levels of sugars, proteins, fats and other flavorful compounds. 

Anyone can do this. Gardening is not difficult; it takes time, and soil tests to determine what amendments your soil needs to optimize nutrition for your home garden, orchards, lawn or pasture. The gain is in taste and health.  Steve Solomon’s latest book, The Intelligent Gardener, discusses soil nutrition for growing optimally healthy foods in sufficient detail to get you started. 

Winter is a great time to be planning next year’s vegetable garden. Order soil tests, then add the right minerals to improve your soil, for great eating next summer. Summer is coming, right? The rain will end sometime, right? 

A red curly kale sample with its red-purple colored fresh juice. The chlorophyll is in there, but masked by the reds and purples of the red kale plant. 

Healthy Soils for Healthy Vegetables

Written December 12, 2012, published in late December, 2012, all photographs by Kathleen Sayce

Soil health for vegetable gardens is more precise than for ornamental gardens and native plants. Most vegetables are annuals or biennials, living only one year, or over one winter.  All of are from other places and climates, with nutrient and soil needs considerably different than local soils can provide. Vegetable plants need:  Deep, open, well-aerated soils with soil carbon, diverse minerals, sunlight, warmth and regular water. With these, they grow quickly into tender, nutritious and edible foods; without them, vegetable plants struggle, easily fall ill, and fail to thrive. Vegetables generally are not shade plants, especially along the raincoast; warmth and regular watering are needed for vegetables to grow well. 

Well-grown vegetables are able to resist weather, diseases, insect pests, and have high levels of minerals, proteins and other plant compounds. This photo of Red Russian Kale was taken in Jim Karnofski’s vegetable garden by Kathleen Sayce.

Soil Carbon

As with other kinds of plants, vegetable plants need soil carbon. The forms that are the most usable for vegetable plants are not aged wood chips or forest debris, but well prepared compost with humus, and biochar (biologically activated charcoal). Vegetable plants use soil carbon throughout their root growing areas, so gardening practices for optimal plant nutrition incorporate carbon of several kinds throughout the soil profile. Gardeners work carbon into the soil with a rototiller or shovel, add layers to the surface, side dress plants, and amend planting holes. They also fallow garden sections every few years, planting cover crops to put more carbon back into the soil. 

Carbon promotes soil health by giving soil organisms food to eat (carbon) and places to live (cellulose scaffolding). The one drawback is that, being formed of cellulose (wood), most forms of compost break down quickly. So gardeners need to add compost regularly, year after year. Only humus, a brown, clean-smelling, somewhat sticky substance, persists for decades to centuries in soil. Compost piles can form humus if clay and local soil are added to each layer. 

Compost with charcoal added is dark colored, and is now ready to go into the vegetable garden.  Photo of one of Jim Karnofski’s compost bins.  

A second soil carbon material, biochar, is charcoal that has been activated with compost or soil microbes. Biochar has an advantage as a soil amendment: charcoal is stable in soils for centuries to millennia. When gardeners add biochar, this is a permanent improvement in the soil. Add biochar along with compost, and over time, you will have the same productivity with less compost. 

Making Biochar

When wood is burned, charcoal is formed during the burning process. If burning is complete, the wood goes to charcoal and then to ash. Starving the fire of oxygen (a process called pyrolysis) promotes charcoal formation and keeps the fire from consuming all the wood. Innovative pyrolysis burners are being developed at backyard and industrial scales to produce large amounts of charcoal with minimal amounts of ash. When the charcoal is wet and cold, it can be added to compost to be inoculated. See  HYPERLINK "http://www.biochar-international.org/" http://www.biochar-international.org/ for biochar producing devices. A short video for an introduction to home charcoal making is on You Tube at  HYPERLINK "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqkWYM7rYpU" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqkWYM7rYpU .

Freshly made charcoal is ready to go into the compost pile when it is wet and cold, and broken into small pieces. 

Mineral Nutrition

The second soil management practice for optimally healthy soils is to use soil tests to determine what minerals are needed, and then to add those missing minerals in the correct amounts. Soil tests are inexpensive, and a simple way to ensure a garden is not over-fertilized with some minerals and too low in others. It’s a good gardening practice to test soils in your vegetable garden and adjust your fertilizer program every year. Minerals can be added as rock dusts, algae extracts, and other forms.  The differences in terms of productivity can be staggering; I’m not talking ten percent increases or even twenty. At times, improvements can be on the order of multiples, as measured by plant weights or volumes, fifty pounds of potatoes instead of twenty, for example.  

Jim Karnofski, local vegetable gardener and retired nurse, has delved into soil mineral nutrition as a neighborhood soil analyst, and is wiling to teach anyone interested in learning the details how to decipher soil test results. He also makes custom nutrient blends for specific soils. I tested my soils a few weeks ago, after years of adding carbon, trace minerals, and organic fertilizer blends. I found that my soils are surprisingly low in boron, manganese, sodium, copper and sulfur. Jim composed a custom blend to meet the nutritional deficiencies based on the soil test. I’ll add a portion of these missing nutrients every few months, test again in coming years, and keep adjusting minerals to improve my soil. A new book by Steve Solomon, The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient-dense Food, goes into splendid detail about vegetable nutrition. 

The sum of all of these actions (adding carbon, testing soils and adding mineral nutrients) is to have optimally healthy soils. Healthy soils produce healthy plants, able to resist disease, drought and insect predation. In turn, healthy plants produce nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits, which are better foods for us.  Many chronic human health conditions go away when people make the change to eating fruits and vegetables grown on optimally healthy soils. I think we’d all like to live healthier lives, and my personal task for the New Year is to promote soil health, so as to promote human health. 

Healthy soils for Garden Plants

Written November 30, 2012, published December 2012

Hand in hand with good plant choices, and planting at the right time (fall) to fit the local climate, is promoting soil health.  There are two paths to take; one is for native perennials, shrubs and trees, and the other is for vegetables. I’ll discuss vegetable soils later. Today, my focus is on ornamental gardens, especially native plants––perennials, shrubs and trees–-and the soil these plants need to grow well. 

On a hillside under pines, Evergreen Huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, and Soft-footed Sedge, Carex leptopoda, grow in thick layers of wood chip mulch. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Our climate is a curious one, with wet winters and dry summers. Wet winters mean that it’s difficult for soils to hold onto nutrients, many of which are water-soluble. Long months of cold rains mean that nutrients wave at plant roots as they wash past and out of reach. Worse, those long wet months bring the ground water table up to the surface in low areas. Roots of most upland plants do not grow in water due to low oxygen levels. The result is these root systems are relatively shallow, and nutrients wash past even more quickly. Also, during severe windstorms, plants with shallow roots are more likely to blow out of the ground. Due to a long wet season, local soils are also acidic; native species tolerate and even prefer this acidity. 

Streambank orchid, Epipactis gigantea, is growing in a low wet swale, amended with compost and aged wood chips. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

In nature, soils store carbon in several forms:  living and dead wood, including logs, branches and twigs, or thatch, and living and dead roots. Many species of fungi and bacteria live on these materials. Wood, roots, branches and twigs are composed of cellulose, the most common biopolymer on the planet, which is made by living plants from sugars formed during photosynthesis to shape cell walls. Those sugars and celluloses are the plants’ building blocks and trade goods. They trade sugars with bacteria and fungi for water and nutrients. 

In thick layers of woody mulch, Stropharia fungi produce mushrooms, the fruits of soil mycelia. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Different species of fungi live on heartwood, greenwood, cambium, bark, roots, and dead wood. Specific fungi live on living roots, dead roots, and on duff materials––twigs, needles and branches that fall to the forest floor.  Specific fungi associate with specific shrubs and trees, connecting via their mycorrhizae (fungal filaments in the soil, which are often whitish and look like thin fragile roots) with plant roots, to share water and nutrients. 

Mushrooms are abundant in garden soils with ample carbon, such as aged wood chips.  Photo by Kathleen Sayce

The fungi get simple sugars from the plants, and the plants get minerals in return. There may be bacteria in association with both that fix nitrogen, and also share with fungi and plants for sugars.  Animals that live in the soil eat roots, fungi and bacteria, and are eaten by other animals. Their bodies are food for other bacteria and fungi. Soil ecosystems are largely hidden from us by virtue of size and location, as most soil organisms are microscopic and all are out of sight underground. 

To promote healthy soils for native plants, then, it is not sufficient to provide water and fertilizer. In fact, nitrogen fertilizer by itself, without the supporting structure of soil carbon and soil organisms, throws soil out of balance, causing soil carbon to be eaten and further depleted in the soil, year after year. 

Balance is restored to the soil by adding several forms of carbon:  compost, biochar (biologically activated charcoal), tree litter and wood chip mulch. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not a soil designed for vegetable gardens, but for native trees, shrubs and perennials, species that have lived here for thousands to millions of years. 

Blue-flowered tall camas, Camassia lechitlinii, is growing in a plant bed that was widened; the thick wood chip and compost layer is now ready to plant. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

There are efficient ways to feed these forms carbon to the soil. One is to mix in compost and biochar around the root zone in the planting hole when you put in plants. The second is to layer all of these materials on the surface, year after year. Carbon promotes the growth of soil organisms, which in turn collectively improve soil health, help it retain nutrients and water. 

Wood chips can go on the surface of the soil in a mulch layer. These aren’t fresh from the chipper, but aged chips, piled and kept damp until well-colonized by soil fungi. The piles are aged for a year or more, until fungal mycorrhizae (visible as small white threads) have thoroughly spread throughout the pile. Once a soil is on its way to improved health, in alternate years spread compost or wood chips. 

How do you know there’s enough carbon on top of and in the soil? You will see fruiting fungi (mushrooms) during the wet season. When mushrooms appear, they tell you that the soil has enough carbon to be reasonably healthy. The gain is in the garden: plants need less summer water, grow well without added fertilizers, flower abundantly, set seed, and resist drought and disease. 

Plant in the Fall for good growth the next year

Written November 4, 2012, published mid November 2012

As an ecologist who likes to garden, I’ve worked and reworked the design and plants in my garden for years, starting with a traditional older coastal garden with lawns, rhododendrons, camellias and roses. I tried perennials and cottage-style beds, then a more Mediterranean-style garden with sages, lavenders, rosemary, bulbs, rockroses, and no summer irrigation.  This led me to focus on soil health, lower impact gardening, and to growing more native plants. I always had a few in my garden, especially evergreen huckleberry and sword fern. Now I have many more, and the result is a hardy, tough garden, full of flowers, bees, butterflies and birds, that needs little to no summer water. 

Common Camas, Camassia leichtlinii, grows 30-40 inches tall, with light blue to dark blue flowers, and is very attractive to native bumblebees and early butterflies. Camas grows in spring wet /summer dry soils, in full sun. Photo by Kathleen Sayce. 

Our wet winters and dry summers aren’t common around the world. Places with some rain all year round, or with dry winters and summer rainfall, cover most of the planet’s landmass. Our local area is considered a cool Mediterranean-type gardening zone. In Mediterranean-type climates, the driest time of year coincides with the most sun and heat. Our summer and early fall weather tends to be quite dry. Small patches of this climate occur all over the world at moderate latitudes, yet the total area does not cover more than ten percent of the planet.  

Pacific wax myrtle, Myrica californica, is an evergreen shrub to small tree. It grows in full sun to part shade, and can tolerate both damp and dry sites. Birds like its waxy berries. It makes good hedges for screening, to 10-15 feet tall, and mixes well with shore pine and salal in hedgerows. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

How our native plants cope

Native plants in the maritime Pacific Northwest compensate for dry summers by timing bud-break, leaf-out, flowering and seed production to seasonal water. These plants also engage with soil fungi with roots; this improves access to nutrients and water. Native plants often have two distinct growing periods, spring and fall, and may go partially dormant in late summer when water stress is the greatest. Many flower in spring, set seed by early to mid summer, and wait out the dry season partially dormant; then they put out new roots in fall. They are ready to grow if rain falls during the dry season, but survive if the weather stays dry.  

Kinnikinnick, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, is a low growing evergreen groundcover with pink flowers and red berries. It grows in full sun to part shade, in damp to dry sites, and mixes well with heathers and salal. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Plant in the fall

The best time to plant is in autumn––after the start of rain, usually October or November. As soils cool down and rain starts, plants’ roots begin to grow. They grow new roots when soils are moist and temperatures are at or above 40 F. In mild winters, this can be almost all winter long.  The bigger the root system by next spring, the more that plant will be able to grow that summer. Fall planting decreases the amount of water needed the next summer because these root systems are bigger than if planted in spring, just before the dry season starts. Reduced watering the next summer by planting the prior fall sounds pretty good. Less watering during the dry season is also very efficient. 

Salal, Gaultheria shallon, is an evergreen shrub that can be kept low or allowed to grow more than six feet tall. It has early pink flowers and edible dark blue berries, and grows in damp to dry soils, full sun to part shade, and mixes well with other shrubs and groundcovers for hedges and woodland plantings. Photo by Kathleen Sayce.

Food for native animals

There is an important ecological reason to use native plants: to support native animals. Insects, birds, small mammals, and the animals that feed on them, are ultimately dependent on native foods. Yes, there are introduced plants that can be eaten by generalist native animals, particularly deer. By and large, most native animals key in on a few native species. If you want butterflies, bees and other pollinators, birds, amphibians and mammals to hang around your yard, put in native plants. Large areas planted to introduced species are ecological deserts for native animals. There’s nothing for them to eat. 

There’s an excellent book on this subject by Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, which contains a wealth of details about the complexity of native plant communities, the animals they are food for, and the choices we have to encourage, or discourage, native ecology in our own yards. He writes about Delaware, but the principles are the same here in the Pacific Northwest. 

If you dislike hauling hoses around, and prefer a garden that can take care of itself in droughts, torrential rains, and snow, then select native plants over introduced plants. There are hundreds of species, including trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs. The result is a garden that is more attractive to native animals, including butterflies, bees and birds, which needs little to no summer water, and survives our wet cold winters in good condition.  Don’t forget the time of year to put in those native plants––in fall. 

Indian rhubarb, Darmera peltata, flowers in the spring, then the leaves come out afterwards. It prefers soils that are wet to damp year round, in part sun to shade. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Pacific Coast Iris: low maintenance wildflowers

Written October 12, 2012, published November 2012

A showy group of irises are native to the West Coast from southern California to southwestern Washington. Called the Pacific Coast Iris (PCI), these species grow very well in our area. There are thirteen to fourteen species and hundreds of hybrids. PCI grow in well-drained soils with some compost and mulch, and prefer part sun to full sun along the coast. Otherwise they need little summer care. They flower from March to June, with peak bloom in May-June. In my garden, they peak just as the lilies start, so I have a continual blooming sequence from March to September, first of iris, then of lilies. The genus Iris is large, with more than one thousand species and many sections. The most well known Iris section is tall bearded (TBI), which are big plants with large rhizomes, very tough, and which grow well in humid wet conditions. The term “bearded” refers to tufts of hairs on the “falls,” the three large petals that hang down in each flower. The upright petals are called standards. There are more than a dozen sections of Iris in the non-bearded group, and PCI are one of those sections. 

PCI Rodeo Gulch, a registered orange with purple signal, from BayView Nursery, Santa Cruz, CA. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

The big yellow TBI that grows along the Columbia River is Iris pseudacorus, yellow flag, from Europe. Yellow flag is listed as a noxious weed in several states, and thrives in wetlands. 

PCI flowers are slightly smaller than TBI flowers; PCI plants are shorter with long, narrow evergreen leaves instead of wide leaves. One species is deciduous, Iris tenax, which lives in southwestern Washington and western Oregon. Plants range in height from less than ten inches to around thirty inches tall. 

PCI Cape Sebastian, an unregistered selection with white flowers and a very showy purple and gold signal. Photo by Kathleen Sayce 

PCI flower color range is wide, from white thru pink, rose, red, orange, yellow, lavenders, blues and purples, browns, to nearly black, which is seen in some very dark red and dark purple flowers. There are hybrids with showy signals (spots on the falls or lower petals), veining, halos, and ruffling. There are wide petal forms and narrow petal forms, bicolor and bi-tone forms. 

PCI Mission Santa Cruz, a lovely rich red-purple flower on a sturdy plant.  Photo by Kathleen Sayce 

Unlike bearded iris, PCI are not wetland plants and do not need much summer water. PCI tolerate wet winters and dry summers; in other words, our normal rainfall patterns are fine for them. They like mildly acidic soils, which is our normal soil condition. A little compost and mulch helps them in sand or clay soils, a little fertilizer promotes flowering. PCI also do well in meadows, where they thrive with an annual fall mowing, which is essential in our climate to keep woody shrubs and trees from growing into grasslands. Native bees, ants and hummingbirds visit PCI flowers, which provide both nectar and pollen. A few are mildly fragrant. 

I have not had deer, aphid, caterpillar, or disease problems in my garden, except when I first planted them. Deer tugged up, chewed on, and spit out all the PCI seedlings the night after they were planted. I found the seedlings the next day lying on the ground, somewhat battered from chewing. I put them back in the ground, and half of them lived. Since then, the deer leave them alone, except for an experimental mouthful every year or so by a fawn that is learning food plants for the first time.  

PCI Blue Plate Special, a registered blue from BayView Nursery, Santa Cruz, CA. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

I started growing PCI more than a decade ago, when I was first practicing dry gardening, and soon learned why PCI aren’t more widely grown: They can be successfully transplanted only for a few weeks in spring, and for a couple of months in fall. I move PCI in the fall, from late September to November, after waiting for wet weather to start, and typically water them only once, the day they are planted. Now I have six species and several dozen hybrids in my garden. Among irisarians, this is barely getting started; I know urban gardeners who grow more than 1,000 iris varieties on a city lot.  Every three or four years they should be divided; if I can’t get to my plants then, I give them more compost to tide them over. 

PCI Finger Painting, a registered blue and white form, from BayView Nursery, Santa Cruz, CA. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Unlike bearded iris, PCI do not like to sit in hot containers in summer, with hot roots, or to lie on the ground for weeks waiting to be planted. They do not like soggy wet feet in summer, either, or hot humid weather; the latter keeps them from being grown in much of central to southeastern US. 

PCI Joy Creek Orchid, an unregistered selection from Joy Creek Nursery, Scappose, OR, with an orchid flower, and a multicolored signal on the falls. Photo by Kathleen Sayce

Out here on the Pacific Northwest Coast, PCI thrive in all but wetland soils, and in part sun to full sun, even in bright shade. My garden has silty sand with some compost mixed into the soil and mulch on top, and here they grow very well.  One species grows only along the immediate coast from southern Oregon to southern California, Douglas iris, Iris douglasiana. It thrives in salty, windy coastal soils, on sand and on seacliffs. Locally, Douglas iris grows in the Discovery Garden at Columbia-Pacific Heritage Museum, Ilwaco, Washington. These plants are typical: tall, with pale lavender to white flowers with a yellow signal, and usually flower in May-June. 

PCI Cape Ferrelo, a light blue form of Iris douglasiana, photo by Kathleen Sayce

With a huge range of PCI sizes, colors, and forms to chose from, there is a PCI for you, just waiting for a chance to grow in your yard. For more information, take a look at  HYPERLINK "http://www.pacificcoastiris.org" www.pacificcoastiris.org, the website for the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris.  The society maintains the registry of hybrid PCI. Pages on each registered hybrid are posted in the American Iris Society’s Iris Encyclopedia, at  HYPERLINK "http://wiki.irises.org/bin/view" 
http://wiki.irises.org/bin/view in the PCN section. 

You can also find information about all the other sections of iris on the AIS website.  

Iris douglasiana, Douglas iris, Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum, Ilwaco, WA, a very pale lavender to white flower with a yellow signal on the falls. Photo by Kathleen Sayce.