Paeonia mascula
totototo@telus.net (Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:44:45 PDT)

On 7 Apr 2011, at 8:51, Jane McGary wrote:

In 1989 I visited Western Hills Nursery, west of Occidental, California, a
nursery famous in its day for holding a treasue trove of unusual plants.

I asked Marshall Olbrich, who was still alive then, how his specimen of
Chaenomeles 'Rinho' (aka 'Contorta') was doing. He replied, not well, as the
winters were too wet for it. This surprised me. Driving to the nursery. I'd
noted a distinct change in the ecology, from the sun drenched, dry, grassy
hills to dry forest vegetation like that native to southern Vancouver Island.
Quite a remarkably sharp change, as though someone had drawn a line on a map
and said "on this side, dry sunny grassy hills, on that side dry forest".

I have a mature specimen of 'Rinho' in my present garden, and it doesn't seem
to turn a hair at our winter wet, not even in my ex-swamp patch of squelch and
ooze. Species peonies have always done well for me, too, including P.
cambessedessii which came up in situ from a stray seed and has survived
everything Mother Nature has thrown at it over the years.

I conclude that at Western Hills the winter rainfall is significantly greater
than here in Victoria. Or perhaps that the climate is more humid, though I am
much closer to the sea where I live (three quarters of a mile, maybe) than
Western Hills' site is (was).

Mary Sue, iirc, lives even further north up the coast, and I speculate that her
winter rainfall is even worse than Western Hills'. The web indicates that
Eureka has about twice the rainfall of Victoria, ~38 vs. ~18 inches per year.
Temperature graphs indicate at Victoria's climate is slightly warmer in summer
and colder in winter than Eureka.

Maybe this isn't right, but whatever the explanation, clearly there's an
ecological surprise here.

The problem is compounded because the west coast has widely (and wildly)
varying microclimates, depending on proximity to the sea, elevation, and the
local terrain in general. (The Pacific coast of northern California, Oregon,
Washington, and BC is hilly, even mountainous, almost everywhere.)

Google StreetView URL for Western Hills Nursery:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.413009,-
122.971144&spn=0.001461,0.002409&z=19&layer=c&cbll=38.413009,-
122.971144&panoid=gGqjijiFfO-S-fMd9IC5DA&cbp=12,1.94,,0,4.81

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada