Tecate Cypress Check-Up
Visited the Guatay Population of the rare Tecate Cypress. It is one of only maybe 9 or 10 populations of this species found worldwide. It’s a pretty peculair trait that so many California chaparral plants have peeling and exfoliating bark (Arctostaphylos, Adenostoma sparsifolium, Hesperocyparis, etc).
I first became interested in this tree after seeing a plant growing in cultivation and noticing how incredible the bark looked - smooth and peeling in strips of red, gray, pink, and purple. I then learned how rare it is in the wild, all of it’s populations restricted to small sites throughout Coastal Southern California and Baja California. I’ve since grown many of these trees from seed. It does exceedingly well in cultivation. A tree I planted on 16th St in Oakland near the intersection of Peralta grew to 20’ wide by 18’ tall in 7 years. Trees must be pruned up as they grow but the leaves smell incredible as do the cones and they are excellent shade trees.
The entire plant community at the Guatay site has not had a fire in quite some time and needs one soon (and will have one soon, whether anybody likes it or not, as fire is an inevitability in this landscape). Everything that grows here shows a very obvious evolution with fire. That’s what makes the chaparral so special (and so tick-free). To access this site I had to crawl through the brush on my hands and knees, in some places I was not able to stand up for nearly 40’ of distance. It really is a corn maze of pleasant smelling plants and soil duff. Sympatric plants included Arctostaphylos glandulosa, Cercocarpus betuloides (Rosaceae), Quercus beberidifolia (oak family, Fagaceae) and Eriophyllum confertiflorum (Asteraceae).
It was a fucking treat to see some beautiful stands of Adenostoma sparsifolium (Rosaceae) further on down the road after leaving the Cypress stand. The bark on this species is incredible.
