Lauw de Jager wrote,
I am still puzzled (with a slight feeling of injustice) why all
>these beautiful plants grow so easily in often common places: road
>verges, rocks overhanging the rolling ocean waves. Still trying to
>figure out why we cannot grow here in France these masses of
>Lachenalias on neglected traffic islands!!
You see this situation all over the world, and the reason is that the
plants are (still) growing where grazing animals are less able to eat them.
Motor vehicles are their own sort of environmental scourge, but they do
deter sheep, goats, cattle, deer, etc., from entering their space. In many
parts of the American West, it's almost pointless to walk away from the
road, because the surviving native plants are all between the fences and
the pavement -- or clinging to big outcrops where cattle and deer don't go,
though goats and sheep may.
Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon