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INTRODUCTION TO THE GEOLOGY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND ITS NATIVE PLANTS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................xiiiPART ONE Introduction1 This Book.....................................................................................32 Prologue to Geology of Southern California....................................................5PART TWO The Earth and Geologic Time3 Earth Materials...............................................................................114 Geologic Time.................................................................................385 Plate tectonics...............................................................................64PART THREE Southern California through Geologic Time6 Overview of the Geologic History of Southern California.......................................797 Proterozoic Era...............................................................................818 Paleozoic Era.................................................................................859 Mesozoic Era..................................................................................9510 Cenozoic Era.................................................................................124PART FOUR Geology and Botany of Southern California's Geomorphic Provinces11 Geomorphic and Floristic Provinces...........................................................14312 Peninsular Ranges and Colorado Desert........................................................14513 Mojave Desert................................................................................17914 Eastern Transverse Ranges and the San Bernardino Mountains...................................20715 Basin and Range Province: Death and Owens Valleys............................................20916 Western Transverse Ranges....................................................................23317 Southern Coast Ranges........................................................................28018 San Joaquin Valley...........................................................................31319 Sierra Nevada, Sierra Nevada Province........................................................317PART FIVE Botany and Plant families20 Botanical Overview...........................................................................35121 Plant Families of Southern California........................................................374BOTANICAL GLOSSARY..............................................................................395MAIN GLOSSARY...................................................................................401SUGGESTED READINGS IN NATURAL HISTORY...........................................................415REFERENCES CITED................................................................................419SPECIES INDEX...................................................................................433SUBJECT INDEX...................................................................................473

Chapter One

The purpose of Introduction to the Geology of Southern California and Its Native Plants is to make the reader more aware of her or his natural environment or world and to provide information that will help with the recognition of rockforming minerals, common rocks and distinctive landforms in southern California, common plant families, and some other native plant taxa. The book is intended for undergraduate, college age students who do not have a background in geology or botany.

For the purposes of this book "southern California" includes regions of California from San Diego in the south to Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada in the north, and from San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and western areas of southern California to Death Valley and the Mojave and Colorado deserts in the east. The Tehachapi Mountains, south of the San Joaquin Valley and southwest of the Sierra Nevada, are considered by some authorities as the dividing geographic feature that separates northern from southern California. Others consider southern California to extend as far north as the Fresno area, which would include Yosemite National Park to the east of Fresno, and still others consider southern California to be south of San Francisco. That is, the Sacramento River is in northern California, and the San Joaquin River is in southern California. These rivers meet near the latitude of San Francisco and empty into San Francisco Bay.

Introduction to the Geology of Southern California and Its Native Plants places southern California in its geologic setting (e.g., its plate-tectonic history and general geology). Because the San Andreas fault system is a major structural geologic feature that lies across much of the western part of southern California the fault system is of great importance. An enigma related to the San Andreas fault system is that it is not possible to completely restore all of the rock units west of the San Andreas fault to their original positions and correlative rocks east of the San Andreas fault when all of the measurable lateral displacements within the fault system have been removed. To better understand the geologic evolution of southern California, some of the questions asked and answered are, how do plates of the Earth's crust move? How do we know that tectonic plates have moved and that they are currently moving? What is the time frame for movement of plates? Why do plates of the Earth's crust move? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to have some understanding of the physical characteristics and properties of the Earth, Earth materials and where they came from.

Another general geologic topic that is emphasized is the early geologic history of southern California (i.e., the geologic history prior to the birth of the San Andreas fault system that developed in western California 29 to 26 million years ago).

Because plate tectonics can influence geography and climate, and climate and topography have influenced the evolution and distribution of life in southern California and elsewhere, some attention is devoted to the evolution and extinction of life.

The numbers and kinds of native plant life in southern California are more commonly visible and abundant in comparison with minerals, rocks, and geomorphologic features. Thus, in addition to being able to recognize these features, this book is designed so that common families of wildflowers, shrubs, and trees in southern California can be identified. An emphasis is placed on the recognition of native plants in terms of their classification as families, and to a lesser degree on their scientific and common names. Because plant geography plays an important role when studying the distribution and assemblages or associations of plants, this subject is touched upon.

The book is not intended to be or include a treatise on plant taxonomy but helpful taxonomically organized references are suggested. Experience has shown that no single book on the botany of California or all of southern California is available that can facilitate the identification of all native plants in southern California, nor is there a single book that has a sufficient number of illustrations that the layperson can simply thumb through the book, using color as the primary characteristic, to identify wildflowers. It is not practical...