Parallel regions

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:58:43 PST
Tom Mitchell's recent post about "mapping" potential growing areas 
for certain plants reminds me that a few years ago, a NARGS member 
named Marcel Jouseau developed such a map to identify potential sites 
for Aquilegia jonesii, a dwarf species of restricted distribution in 
mountains of the inland West of North America, and with his model in 
hand, went looking for it in the identified places. He actually found 
some populations that had not been documented previously, and wrote 
this up. I'll see if I can unearth the exact article if anyone's interested.

I don't think Marcel used the internet to do this work, because 
Google Earth didn't exist then. There are a lot of other 
climatological information sites maintained by different national 
governments, and if you Google "climate" plus a place name you will 
find some good things.

Incidentally Oxford University Press is preparing a new edition of 
their useful "Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather" (I copyedited the 
first edition, so I have it here), which should include a lot of new 
information relevant to this kind of inquiry.

In addition to the book Bracey mentioned, a good source is Martyn 
Rix's "Growing Bulbs," which I've mentioned here before as one of my 
favorite bulb books. It covers the world's various geophyte-hosting 
climates quite well in gardener's terms. It is out of print but 
copies seem easy to find.

Jane McGary



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