Annual
precipitation:
(Little summer heat), 12-25 inches
Common Animals:
Towhee, White crowned sparrow, Cottontail, Deer, Coyote,
Raccoon, Quail, Skunk, Gopher, Hummingbirds
Common Plants:
California
Sagebrush (Artemisia californica) Buckwheat
(Eriogonum spp., notably E. fasciculatum), California
Lilac (Ceanothus spp.), Manzanita
(Arctostaphylos spp.), Monkey
flowers (Diplacus spp., the drought tolerant types),
Sage (Salvia
spp.), Gooseberry
and Currant (Ribes spp.), Coyote
Brush (Baccharis sp.)
Soil
and climate notes:
 Think
of this as a soft chaparral. Summer fog/overcast is common.
Summer temperatures can creep into the 100's but are usually in
the 80's and 90's. Winter temperatures drop to a chilly (ha ha!)
27-30 degrees F..
A mixture of very diverse soils, from acidic sand on hard
pan(manzanita country) to alkaline clays(largely converted to
annual weeds). The USDA Geological Maps are very useful in these
areas. The USDA soil maps are confusing at best, wrong at worst.
Coastal Sage Scrub in beach sand in Los Osos,
California
The
Coastal Sage Scrub plant community has wildlife and mini-wildlife
activity for most of the year. The climate is so mild that there
is something flowering every month of the year. The dormant
period for the plants is summer through fall when there is no
rainfall and the temperatures are higher. Generally, these are
not absolute, but Gooseberries
(Ribes spp.) flower from from late fall through
spring; Monkeyflowers
(Mimulus spp.) flower spring through summer;
Coreopsis (Coreopsis spp.), Encelia
(Encelia californica), California
Aster (Lessingia filaginifolia) and (Aster
chilensis) flower from summer through fall.
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Most of the population of California lives in
the Coastal Sage Scrub plant community.
 The
Coastal Sage Scrub plant community of California exists along the
coast from about San Francisco, and Lafayette down through about
San Diego (San Diego has its own Baja flavor) and inland as far
as Riverside in southern California. In some places like north
Malibu it is missing entirely, replaced by Chaparral, or in parts
of the Big Sur coast, Mixed Evergreen Forest. It is sometimes
called Soft Chaparral. Some common plants can include California
Sagebrush (Artemisia californica), Cliff
Buckwheat or California
Buckwheat (Eriogonum
parvifolium or Eriogonum
fasciculatum), California
Aster (Corethrogyne filaginifolia), Golden
Bush (Isocoma menziesii), Coyote
Brush (Baccharis pilularis), Encelia
(Encelia californica), Black,
Purple, or
White Sage
(Salvia
mellifera, S.
leucophylla, or S.
apiana), Fuchsia-Flowered
Gooseberry (Ribes speciosum), and Monkey
flower (Mimulus aurantiacus).
Many
of the plants within the Coastal Sage Scrub plant community need
to dry out in summer through fall so they can go 'dormant'.
During this period, these California natives love to have a
hose-down every week or two, though, which will moisten the mulch
but allow the soil to stay mostly dry. A critical element for
healthy plants is this: Dust is a problem for many of these
species, and they do not deal with it well. Dust is a people
problem, so wash it off every week if possible during the summer
and fall months when no rain occurs.
In
some areas there exists nearly solid serpentinite soils. Where
the conditions would normally dictate Coastal Sage Scrub you end
up with a serpentine grassland. We do not separate this as a
plant community because the serpentine plant community is an
extreme form of the Coastal Sage Scrub plant community that is
supposed to be there, minus the plants that cannot tolerate
serpentine. On real 'raw' serpentine areas this will be nearly
all herbaceous, seasonal forbs, grasses and bulbs that occur in
the adjacent Coastal Sage Scrub. The serpentine soil supports an
extreme form of the Coastal Sage Scrub plant community, as the
beach sand does. Plants that cannot live in serpentine may live
in the sandy beach soils, like Cliff
Buckwheat (Eriogonum parvifolium). Plants that
can live on the serpentine, like Golden
Bush (Hazardia squarrosa), don't live on the
beach sand, and both plants live in the 'normal' soils of the
plant community.
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