Mary Ann Matthews compiled and published the book An Illustrated Field Key to the Flowering Plants of Monterey County (and Ferns, Fern Allies, and Conifers) back in 1997. With 2,055 specimens, it was thought to be a comprehensive compendium of every native and naturalized plant in the county. (“Naturalized” means they can reproduce on their own.)
It isn’t any longer.
Michael Mitchell, a former British national and tax lawyer who is on the board of the California Native Plant Society Monterey Bay Chapter, has pulled together a second edition. It was inititated for two reasons. One was due to changes in the Jepson Manual in 2012.
“The Jepson [Manual] is the bible of California plants,” Mitchell says. “Botanists had been looking very hard at the ways plant families were structured. There was a huge number of changes.”
The changes were the result of genetic analysis and “phenomenal progress in plant systematics” according to UC Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium.
The second reason was that more Monterey County plants were discovered. A leading authority in the botanical community, Vern Yadon, updated the Plant List for Monterey County, “intended to be a definitive list of what’s found in the county,” Mitchell says.
Comparing Yadon’s list to the original Field Guide, Mitchell and others found 400 more plants. So they got to work adding them, for a new total of 2,329.
On the left pages of the book are line illustrations of key features of the plants; on the right are keys to identifying the plants, written in a shorthand.
Deondromecon’s short entry reads: Glabrous, branched, evergreen shrub, 1-3 m; lvs simple, entire, gray-green; petals 4(6), yellow, 2-3 cm; fr linear, curved, 5-10 cm; dry slopes, C; A-J; [Bush Poppy].
“The book, I’m afraid, is quite unavoidably technical,” Mitchell says.
He didn’t distinguish a plant’s edible or medicinal value.
“Many plants are edible,” he says. “Whether you eat them for pleasure is another question. Medicinal plants you have to be extraordinarily careful in what you say. Where I was aware [of seriously toxic plants], I would include that.”
The appeal of botany he chalks to up being out in nature, seeing things grow and appreciating beauty. But there is intellectual stimulation, too. Like observing how natural selection works in plants.
Chaparral, for instance, drops a toxin that inhibits plant growth underneath it. That way, the plants don’t have to share “limited resources” with other species.
“If a wildfire occurs, it not only burns the [chaparral] to a crisp, but the toxin, too. That’s why you get extraordinary displays of wildflowers following a wildfire.”
It doesn’t take a glossary or study to be filled with the wonder of plants. But if you’re like Mitchell – “I enjoy detail, accuracy and precision… I like to know what I’m looking at” – this might be a book for you.
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