Читать книгу Afoot & Afield: Orange County. A Comprehensive Hiking Guide онлайн

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The bulk of Orange County’s undeveloped land can be grouped into three general classes, which botanists often call plant communities or plant associations. In a broader sense, they are biological communities because they include animals as well as plants. These plant communities are briefly described below.

The sage scrub (or coastal sage scrub) community lies mostly below 2,000 feet in elevation and extends east from the coastline to the foothills and lower spurs of the Santa Ana Mountains. The dominant species are small shrubs, typically California sagebrush, black sage, white sage, and wild buckwheat. Two larger shrubs often found here are laurel sumac and lemonade berry, which like poison oak are members of the sumac family. Interspersed among the somewhat loosely distributed shrubs is a variety of grasses and wildflowers, green and colorful during the rainy season but dry and withered during the summer and early-fall drought.

The chaparral community is commonly found above 2,000 feet in the Santa Ana Mountains, where it cloaks the slopes like a thick-pile carpet. The dominant plants are chamise, scrub oak, manzanita, mountain mahogany, toyon, and various forms of ceanothus (“wild lilac”). These are tough, intricately branched shrubs with deep root systems that ensure their survival during the long, hot summers. Chaparral is sometimes referred to as an “elfin forest,” a literal description of a mature stand. Without the benefit of a trail, travel through mature chaparral, which is typically 10–15 feet high, is almost impossible. Sage scrub and chaparral vegetation tend to intermix readily throughout the Santa Anas, the chaparral preferring shadier, north-facing slopes, and the sage scrub preferring hot, dry, south-facing slopes.