IBSA Symposium

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Wed, 10 Sep 2003 08:52:45 PDT
Lauw de Jager wrote,
    I am still puzzled  (with a slight feeling of injustice) why all
>these beautiful plants grow so easily in often common places: road
>verges, rocks overhanging  the  rolling ocean waves.  Still trying to
>figure out why we cannot grow here in France these masses of 
>Lachenalias  on neglected traffic islands!!


You see this situation all over the world, and the reason is that the 
plants are (still) growing where grazing animals are less able to eat them. 
Motor vehicles are their own sort of environmental scourge, but they do 
deter sheep, goats, cattle, deer, etc., from entering their space. In many 
parts of the American West, it's almost pointless to walk away from the 
road, because the surviving native plants are all between the fences and 
the pavement -- or clinging to big outcrops where cattle and deer don't go, 
though goats and sheep may.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon




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