Flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California: A Manual of the Vascular Plants

By John Thomas

The Santa Cruz Mountains, an area covering almost 1,400 square miles from San Francisco southward to the Monterey County line, are a part of the Coast Range of Central California. The Mountains and the adjacent lowlands have a rich vascular flora, and about 1,800 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and hybrids of ferns, conifers, and flowering plants, distributed among 168 families, have been reported from the region. This comprehensive flora, the first of the area, is designed for use by both the serious beginner and the trained botanist.

The flora is illustrated by 250 line drawing and ten photographs. In addition, there is a map of the Santa Cruz Mountains area and a stratigraphic profile of the rock formations. The stratigraphic profile and a section on geology have been contributed by Dr. Earl E. Brabb of the United States Geological Survey.

Distributional notes, keys to families, genera, and species, pertinent synonymy, a glossary of technical terms, an index of place names, and common0name and scientific-name indexes form the body of the text. The Introduction contains a description of the geography of the Santa Cruz Mountains and adjacent lowlands, seconds on the geology and climate, a brief discussion and analysis of the vegetation and floristic affinities of the area, and a history of past botanical collecting. A selected list of references has been appended to allow the interested individual to pursue his studies further.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804718628
• ISBN13: 9780804718622
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 444 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Thomas would be pleased

The book was at a descent price, and had the option for free shipping- very nice! The book came on time, and I was pleased with fast shipping and condition of the book. Well done.

An Indispensible Work for the Committed Landowner

I am a property owner in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This flora has been indispensable to me as a guide by which to restore my land. Its keys are, for the most part, comprehensible and useful to the amateur. Its detailed references to where the plants were found are a blessing in a region with enormous climate and soil variations. It is purely a scientific work by a man who loved the land. The Santa Cruz Mountains have an incredibly complex flora. They are located at the confluence of three major botanical regions: North Coast, Central Coast, and Inland. As a consequence, a single parcel can have a bewildering array of plants. On my fourteen acres alone, I have distinguished over 240 species, of which 60 are exotics. Without a good flora, I would be lost, killing things that are native and letting exotics pass simply because the task of weeding is so physically and intellectually overwhelming.The rewards of this kind of work can be equally overwhelming, and I owe a personal debt to botanists such as Thomas. I am astonished that this was but a graduate dissertation. I can only say that I wish his ability, integrity, and energy was more common.Modern flora, although blessed with the benefit of DNA analysis, can be needlessly complicated with innumerable "subspecies" that, from my observations, may only be hybrids or simply variants based upon distinctions important only to the professional career of the botanist. Although Thomas' book may be in that respect somewhat dated, it is also a blessing. I am often faced with making distinctions on attributes belonging to separate "species" that are shared by individuals on the same parcel! Jepson, while equally indispensable and supposedly definitive, can, in that respect, be maddening. "Plants of the San Francisco Bay Region," by Beldeman and Kolzoff and "Coastal County Plants from Santa Cruz to Mendocino," by George Pikkaranien, although less comprehensive than Jepson, are, in some respects, more useful, if only because of the photographs and references to attrributes of typical habitat. I use Thomas, Pikkaranien, and Beldeman/Kolzoff to get close with my identification, confirm it with the CalFlora web site (where the photographs are usually poor), and complete the identification process using Jepson, both the text and the online version, which sometimes don't agree. My only criticism of Thomas is that I wish there were more of those excellent drawings.