fall blooming pattern: was RE: Flowers of Crete

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:24:41 PST
Dear Lee,

Thanks for looking that up for me. It shows that the pattern in Crete is 
very similar to our Northern California pattern with the most rain falling 
between November and March and almost no rain in the summer. There are 
obviously a lot of factors determining when plants bloom and people have 
come up with a number of good ones: pollinators, weather, other plants in 
the area, and of course their genetic background. I liked Jim McKenney's 
suggestion that the lack of fall blooming plants in California was 
influenced by the origins of the California flora. That's an obvious 
conclusion, but not one I had thought about.

John Bryan has often suggested that zipcodes would be a useful in 
determining weather patterns, but the Dallman book speaks to the importance 
of elevation and exposure to the ocean in determining weather patterns and 
within zipcodes in coastal areas there can be a large range. Where I live 
the newspaper runs the total rainfall figures for the last 8 years each 
week for our area. There is a range from 41 to 62 inches (1040 to 1575 mm) 
of rain for the 7 spots where rainfall has been recorded for the last eight 
years (years when we have had much less rain than the 8 years previously 
which included some El Nino years.) Storms dump a lot more rain on the 
ridges, seeming to just hang over them. That is why Cazadero (in your 
figures) has such high numbers. In the El Nino years it often climbed above 
100 inches. (2540 mm.)

I think some of our winter storms don't go very far south and that may 
explain the big drop in precipitation that you noted. In South Africa the 
opposite is true. Some of the winter storms that bring rain to Cape Town 
may not make it north to Namaqualand.

Mary Sue 


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