{"id":60621,"date":"2021-11-23T07:25:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T12:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60621"},"modified":"2021-11-23T07:25:07","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T12:25:07","slug":"plant-lists-that-shouldnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60621","title":{"rendered":"Plant lists that shouldn\u2019t exist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plant lists that shouldn\u2019t exist<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Nothing drives me crazier than simplistic solutions to complex problems. Given our changing climate, there has been an explosion of \u201cdrought tolerant\u201d and \u201cfirewise\u201d plant lists in the gardening world. Most of these lists are devoid of science and all of them are removed from reality. The fact is that taxonomy plays a minimal role in determining whether a plant will tolerate environmental extremes.<\/p>\n

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Lack of irrigation and mulch guarantees a drought-stressed landscape regardless of the selected species.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s start with the most obvious problems with these lists. The goal isn\u2019t to have plants that require less additional water \u2013 it\u2019s to have a landscape that requires less additional water. Similarly, the relative flammability of plants is less important than whether the landscape surrounding those plants is protected from fire. Plants don\u2019t exist in vacuum and unless you are strictly a container gardener a single plant\u2019s impact on water use or fire resilience is negligible. So a gardener\u2019s questions should be \u201cHow can I make my landscape more drought tolerant? How can I reduce the likelihood of wildfire damage?\u201d And these are questions that can be addressed with knowledge gleaned from applied plant and soil sciences.<\/p>\n

Drought Tolerance<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Arborvitae can tolerate droughty summers, but they don\u2019t tolerate improper planting and management.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First of all, let\u2019s think about what \u201cdrought\u201d really means: it\u2019s an unusual lack of rainfall. It doesn\u2019t mean no irrigation, and it doesn\u2019t mean dry soil. Drought is a climatological term, not one associated with soil water management. Fine roots and their root hairs require water to function. Without sufficient soil water plants will go dormant or die, particularly during establishment. Plants that are drought tolerant can tolerate seasonal lack of rainfall, but they can\u2019t tolerate chronically dry soil conditions.<\/p>\n

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Even \u201cdrought tolerant\u201d species like Sempervivum will die if there\u2019s not enough soil water.<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plant lists that shouldn\u2019t exist Nothing drives me crazier than simplistic solutions to complex problems. Given our changing climate, there has been an explosion of \u201cdrought tolerant\u201d and \u201cfirewise\u201d plant lists in the gardening world. Most of these lists are devoid of science and all of them are removed from reality. The fact is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,32209,3699,17131,31361,866],"class_list":["post-60621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-drought-tolerance","tag-irrigation","tag-landscape","tag-the-garden-professors","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60622,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60621\/revisions\/60622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}