Red's Good Vs. Evil Cow Barn - Potential Safety Topic -environmental hazard - Absence of Cedars/Junipers
Audio Message Produced by LOMO PHONOGRAPHICA for the sole use of Red's Good Vs. Evil Cow Barn.
As you know, and as many others have often stated publicly, Crumby is a paragon of Safety Consciousness. Crumby is always on the lookout for those common environmental hazards that could hurt one of us. As you also know, Crumby feels obliged to communicate about these environmental hazards under the sub-topic of Potential Safety Topics. This way Crumby can apprize you of environmental hazards before you hurt yourself, or, before he is forced to report you to the proper authorities for fooling around with an environmental hazard.
That Concludes the Audio Message Provided by LOMO PHONOGRAPHICA. Red is now alive.
Thanks again Lomo for workin up that introductory message. This un looks like a long un so let's get to it. Here's the Crumby Ovate with:
Today's Potential Safety Topic- environmental hazard - Absence of Cedars/Junipers. By way of introduction I shall paraphrase from several texts, the learned and semi-learned have produced on this Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard - Cedars. First, "The Manual of Vascular Plants of Texas, 1970, paperback edition*, indicates that there are "about 60 species widely distributed over the Northern Hemisphere. With few exceptions, cedars are trees and shrubs of poor dry soils. In Texas they are especially common on breaks and rim rocks of mesas in the central and western parts of the state." And from "The Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas" we learn also that "one species occurs in east Africa." Hmmmm. Also, one of the cedars (Juniperus virginiana) is of widespread occurrence in eastern North America and east Texas and up the Red River Basin to west Texas and western Oklahoma and it likes dry sandy or rocky soils.
Since Texas has plenty of poor dry rocky or sandy soils (erosion not withstanding), Texas also has plenty of cedars, eight kinds of native ones, in fact, more or less, with 6 of these primarily in the western part of the state and two primarily in the east.
Notice to this point that cedars, with one exception above, have been designated by the epithet, cedars. I have chosen to go along with this ignorant and vulgar epithet so far to make a point, to whit, that Linnaean names are less of an environmental hazard than common names. Here follows a list of all the Linnaean genera, of which I am aware, to which the common name cedars has been applied: arborvitae (Thuja), cedar (Cedrus), cypress (Cupressus), false cypress (Chamaecyparis), juniper (Juniperus) and sequoia (Sequoia). There are probably some others. Note that the closest spelling of any of these though, to cedar, is Cedrus. And for all you bible scholars (Cedrus libani) is the famous Cedar of Lebanon, maybe. So true cedars are in the genus Cedrus and none of them are native to Texas, while what the ignorant and vulgar of these parts call cedars, are actually junipers (Juniperus), most of the time.
By the way, I, Crumby Ovate, in the context of confronting evil, have visited an interesting web site or two, odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/plant.nsf/pages/allb..... has "All the Plants of the Bible." Counting some fungi and yeast, 86 different taxa, are noted at this site as being mentioned in the bible. Also, there's http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/1249a.htm "Plants in the Bible". This second site which also includes an advertisement for the Catholic Encyclopedia, CD, $29.95, concludes that about 130 plants are mentioned in the bible and provides this commentary on the low number. "Only some 130 plants are mentioned in Scripture, which is not surprising since ordinary people are interested only in a few, whether useful or ornamental."
Despite the absurdity of the preceding remark on a number of levels and the shameless money changing, I actually recommend this site over the other one, maybe, because it includes the bulrush (common name variously applied to the genera Scirpus, Schoenoplectus and Typha) and the other one omits the bulrush, but otherwise evinces more scholarship, maybe.
Come on. How could they skip baby Moses and the bulrushes?
Of course, the "bulrush" noted is, according to the "Plants in the Bible", either Arundo donax, Cyperus papyrus, Juncus acutus, Juncus communis or Juncus maritimus. From one of these, the ark of baby Moses was fashioned, maybe. Now this is not to say that the Druidry, even in recent times have not had some difficulty with flora, as a careful reading of Robert Graves, "The White Goddess" occasionally spells out.
But now to pivot back on my original course which was the Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard, ah, - Cedars/Junipers. As we now know, the cedars often spelled in these parts are actually junipers. Now, what are the safety implications of this misspelling and why are "absence of junipers a potential safety topic- environmental hazard?
1) Junipers misspelled as cedars can cause confusion, a prime cause of our old foe, panic attacks. Also, when you get called by the wrong name all the time, you tend to disappear.
2) Lying offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. This particular misspelling has allowed Republicans to lie and get away with a lie, as usual, on a technicality. The lie is that cedars, meaning junipers, are not native to Texas. But junipers are, of course, native to these parts and have been for many multiples of a tousand or two tousand years. But the republicans always call the junipers, cedars, so technically they are not lying when they say cedars are not native to Texas. The most widespread hypothesis I have heard from republicans about how cedars recently got to Texas involves Mexican cows coming up on trail drives and shitting out cedar berries on what was at that time a beautiful verdant grassland with grass so tall it came up so high on a horse, that an observer from a distance would only see the head of the horse and the torso and head of the rider. This is obviously ridiculous, because only one grass species that's ever been in these parts grows tall enough to conceal the bottom of a horse (Panicum virgatum) and it is habituated to deep soils of bottom lands, not the poor rocky or sandy soil of most everywhere else in these parts. But now that there is an African juniper on record we will probably be hearing that the cedars were introduced by slaves, because as every one knows, blacks like gin, and juniper berries (Juniperus communis) of the northeast Yorenited States) are used to flavor gin.
A second hypothesis I have heard is that the verdant grasslands were maintained by the Indians who set the fires on purpose to keep the land a verdant grassland. This may be, but it is also clear that the juniper-oak woodlands do not burn easily, and due to the high humidity of these parts, and relatively high precipitation, oak-juniper woodland is in no way comparable to the true fire disclimax produced communities of the much drier western Yorenited States.
So about all that can be said on the topic of pre-white folk plant communities on the Edwards Plateau is that at various times there was more or less grassland and more or less oak-juniper woodland. And since everyone is free to have an hypothesis or two, my definition of the word (hypothesis) being, a potential lie awaiting exposure, I will venture one (hypothesis). In the absence of human disturbance events and major climatic changes, there occur places, where certain plants are so uniquely adapted, that nothing can happen at that place to change their occupation of that place as the preponderant dominant species or complex of species. Here are some examples I have noticed from long and repeated observation.
a) buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) patch community - These are found in low relief areas with moderate soil depth and high permeability. Areas are typically small, more or less oval in shape and the plant community is buffalo grass and a few native forbs of little consequence.
b) shrub communities of the western Edwards Plateau - These are found in areas of low precipitation, high permeability, much relative runoff and moderate to high relief. Due to these meterological and edpahic characteristics, dominants on these spots are various kinds of shrubs of the genera (Condalia, Diospyros, Fraxinus, Quercus) and trees of many species that never get very big because they can not tolerate the spot (microhabitat) weather and edaphics as trees so they stay little or die. These areas are also the absolutely uncontested and immutable home of the black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla).
c) Glen Rose slopes midgrass community - These are found, as described in the preceding name, on subsets of the Glen Rose slopes, a fairly big subset of the eastern Edwards Plateau, with seep muhly (Muhlenbergia revechonnii) as the dominant plant, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and tall grama (Bouteloua pectinata) are also included variously. Again, something is going on in terms of soils, slope and moisture to allow for the persistence of this community, no matter what. (If you could get a really short horse and a really tiny cowboy, you might be able to replicate the mythical tall grassland of the verdant Edwards Plateau here, pictorially. And actually, I am thinking of doing just that. If anyone has access to a Hopalong Cassidy and Topper figurine, please see me after the show).
d) Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) is the climax dominant over huge areas of the Edwards Plateau and there's nothing mere mortals can do about that.
_______ Yikes, No. No. No. Somebody needs to interrupt me when I digress so. I didn't mean to go there. I really pivoted. So on to #3 with supersonic speed..
3) Gluttony offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. Since 1933 the US government has paid out huge sums of the tax payer's money to private landowners for cedar/juniper control. Millions of acres have been treated. Often the same acreage has been treated multiple times. These treatments, mechanical , chemical and lately a combination of mechanical and fire were designed to promote a grassland or grassland- shrubland disclimax more agreeable to domestic livestock, cows and goats, than juniper-oak woodland. How many times have I heard, no herbs grow under the cedar/juniper. Yeah right. It would be interesting to discover if the production of cattle and goats on the treated acreage has actually increased from 1933 to the present time and at what cost to the tax payer.
4) Lying offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. The latest Republican technical lie is that cedars/ junipers use up all the water via evapo-transpiration that we humans and our domestics, quasi- domestics (white-tailed deer) require, or may in the future, require for ourselves. Many erstwhile studies, also paid for by tax dollars, have attempted to prove this hypothesis and these experiments do appear to show that if an area is denuded of trees, an initial flush of groundwater will result. After that, when and if sufficient herbaceous vegetation recovers in the area, data collected so far has been insufficiently fabricated to demonstrate a conclusive trend. For you see, herbaceous plants evapotranspire too, and you have to maintain them in sufficient quantity to keep the poor shallow soil from eroding away to bare rock.
5) Monocultures offend the Goddess and that makes for a more dangerous environment. Often, on the 24,000,000 million acre Edwards Plateau of central Texas, denuding an area of its cedar/juniper results in the establishment of a fine stand of King Ranch bluestem (Bothrichloa ischaemum) in its place. This species, its common name not withstanding, (another technical lie) is a native of Central Asia that has been widely introduced for erosion control. It is a favorite of the Texas Department of Transportation in this capacity and is therefore, now ubiquitous on road shoulders throughout central Texas. A bunch grass species tolerant of fire and mowing, and of little value as forage for wildlife or domestic livestock, KR now forms dense monocultural stands along highways and has escaped or been seeded into adjacent disturbed landscapes to the extent that it is now ubiquitous. So every time cedars/junipers are cleared, KR moves into the vacuum and increases to the exclusion of native herbaceous plants. An example, is the Wheless Preserve, the largest single preserve entity in the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve system of Travis County , Texas. On this preserve, with a primary function to provide habitat for the endangered golden- cheeked warbler, when the canopy opens, KR becomes the dominant plant species in that opening. Two open areas on the preserve and adjacent open woodlands, accounting for several hundred acres of the preserve, have KR monocultures including a 100 plus acre black-capped vireo restoration site. KR isn't of much use to an arboreal, insectivorous warbler, and there have never been any black-capped vireos recorded at this preserve, or for that matter before it was a preserve, during the 30 odd years people have been looking for them out there.
6) The Goddess is offended by redundancy and that makes for a more dangerous environment. A whole bunch of plants are endemic (found nowhere else in the world) or nearly so, to the juniper- oak woodlands of the Edwards Plateau. Some of these are, tapped below from the North America Regional Center of Endemism: CPD Site NA32 web site: Topping the list are the beautiful and endangered Styrax texana and the threatened Styrax platanifolia, known from a few canyons in the Hill Country (Gonsoulin 1974). The rare, beautiful and probably endangered Salvia penstemonoides deserves an early listing, followed by: Dalea sabinalis (Barneby 1977), Streptanthus bracteatus, Crataegus secreta (Phipps 1990), Philadelphus ernestii, P. texanus, Penstemon triflorus, Carex edwardsensis (Bridges and Orzell 1989), Seymeria texana (Turner 1982), Tridens buckleyanus (Gould 1975), Anemone edwardsiana, Penstemon helleri, Matelea edwardsensis, Amsonia tharpii, Ancistrocactus tobuschii, Onosmodium helleri, Erigeron mimegletes, Tragia nigricans, Berberis swaseyi, Amorpha texana (Wilbur 1975), Hesperaloë parviflora, Galactia texana, Opuntia edwardsensis (Grant and Grant 1979, 1982), Kuhnia leptophylla (Turner 1989), Perityle lindheimeri (Powell 1974), Tradescantia edwardsiana, Chaetopappa effusa (Nesom 1988), C. bellidifolia (Nesom 1988), Quercus laceyi, Vitis monticola (Moore 1991), Buddleja racemosa, Garrya lindheimeri (Dahling 1978) and Verbesina lindheimeri. Lots of other plants, including a bunch of really cool ones are nearly endemic to these juniper-oak woodlands of the Edwards Plateau.
Oh well. I nearly forgot. Lots of humans and almost humans, including me, are allergic to juniper pollen which blows around these parts from about November through February. This pollen is a great boon to the allergy doctors in these parts.
Lots of wildlife like junipers a whole lot (especially the berries it produces and the numerous insects it houses) and the golden-cheeked warbler is totally reliant on Juniperus ashei for replication habitat.
The wood of junipers is resistant to decay and so is used for fenceposts, Junipeus ashei, and cedar chests, Juniperus virginiana. Ah, there's nothing like the aroma of a good cedar chest.
_________
Well, I could go on for a good while longer on this subtopic, and may yet, another day , but I think you can see how dangerous the absence of cedars/junipers really is. Thanks for you attention to this. She's all yours Red.
Thank ye Crumby Ovate. We will definitely tote this up as a Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard - Absence of Cedars/Junipers. We may need to do some OT in these parts relating to this subtopic. There's coffee for those goin and a Welcome Before All of You.
* The binding on the earlier editions falls off after some use. So these are the paperback editions. Glen Rose may have the first of the first paperback edition.
As you know, and as many others have often stated publicly, Crumby is a paragon of Safety Consciousness. Crumby is always on the lookout for those common environmental hazards that could hurt one of us. As you also know, Crumby feels obliged to communicate about these environmental hazards under the sub-topic of Potential Safety Topics. This way Crumby can apprize you of environmental hazards before you hurt yourself, or, before he is forced to report you to the proper authorities for fooling around with an environmental hazard.
That Concludes the Audio Message Provided by LOMO PHONOGRAPHICA. Red is now alive.
Thanks again Lomo for workin up that introductory message. This un looks like a long un so let's get to it. Here's the Crumby Ovate with:
Today's Potential Safety Topic- environmental hazard - Absence of Cedars/Junipers. By way of introduction I shall paraphrase from several texts, the learned and semi-learned have produced on this Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard - Cedars. First, "The Manual of Vascular Plants of Texas, 1970, paperback edition*, indicates that there are "about 60 species widely distributed over the Northern Hemisphere. With few exceptions, cedars are trees and shrubs of poor dry soils. In Texas they are especially common on breaks and rim rocks of mesas in the central and western parts of the state." And from "The Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas" we learn also that "one species occurs in east Africa." Hmmmm. Also, one of the cedars (Juniperus virginiana) is of widespread occurrence in eastern North America and east Texas and up the Red River Basin to west Texas and western Oklahoma and it likes dry sandy or rocky soils.
Since Texas has plenty of poor dry rocky or sandy soils (erosion not withstanding), Texas also has plenty of cedars, eight kinds of native ones, in fact, more or less, with 6 of these primarily in the western part of the state and two primarily in the east.
Notice to this point that cedars, with one exception above, have been designated by the epithet, cedars. I have chosen to go along with this ignorant and vulgar epithet so far to make a point, to whit, that Linnaean names are less of an environmental hazard than common names. Here follows a list of all the Linnaean genera, of which I am aware, to which the common name cedars has been applied: arborvitae (Thuja), cedar (Cedrus), cypress (Cupressus), false cypress (Chamaecyparis), juniper (Juniperus) and sequoia (Sequoia). There are probably some others. Note that the closest spelling of any of these though, to cedar, is Cedrus. And for all you bible scholars (Cedrus libani) is the famous Cedar of Lebanon, maybe. So true cedars are in the genus Cedrus and none of them are native to Texas, while what the ignorant and vulgar of these parts call cedars, are actually junipers (Juniperus), most of the time.
By the way, I, Crumby Ovate, in the context of confronting evil, have visited an interesting web site or two, odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/plant.nsf/pages/allb..... has "All the Plants of the Bible." Counting some fungi and yeast, 86 different taxa, are noted at this site as being mentioned in the bible. Also, there's http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/1249a.htm "Plants in the Bible". This second site which also includes an advertisement for the Catholic Encyclopedia, CD, $29.95, concludes that about 130 plants are mentioned in the bible and provides this commentary on the low number. "Only some 130 plants are mentioned in Scripture, which is not surprising since ordinary people are interested only in a few, whether useful or ornamental."
Despite the absurdity of the preceding remark on a number of levels and the shameless money changing, I actually recommend this site over the other one, maybe, because it includes the bulrush (common name variously applied to the genera Scirpus, Schoenoplectus and Typha) and the other one omits the bulrush, but otherwise evinces more scholarship, maybe.
Come on. How could they skip baby Moses and the bulrushes?
Of course, the "bulrush" noted is, according to the "Plants in the Bible", either Arundo donax, Cyperus papyrus, Juncus acutus, Juncus communis or Juncus maritimus. From one of these, the ark of baby Moses was fashioned, maybe. Now this is not to say that the Druidry, even in recent times have not had some difficulty with flora, as a careful reading of Robert Graves, "The White Goddess" occasionally spells out.
But now to pivot back on my original course which was the Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard, ah, - Cedars/Junipers. As we now know, the cedars often spelled in these parts are actually junipers. Now, what are the safety implications of this misspelling and why are "absence of junipers a potential safety topic- environmental hazard?
1) Junipers misspelled as cedars can cause confusion, a prime cause of our old foe, panic attacks. Also, when you get called by the wrong name all the time, you tend to disappear.
2) Lying offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. This particular misspelling has allowed Republicans to lie and get away with a lie, as usual, on a technicality. The lie is that cedars, meaning junipers, are not native to Texas. But junipers are, of course, native to these parts and have been for many multiples of a tousand or two tousand years. But the republicans always call the junipers, cedars, so technically they are not lying when they say cedars are not native to Texas. The most widespread hypothesis I have heard from republicans about how cedars recently got to Texas involves Mexican cows coming up on trail drives and shitting out cedar berries on what was at that time a beautiful verdant grassland with grass so tall it came up so high on a horse, that an observer from a distance would only see the head of the horse and the torso and head of the rider. This is obviously ridiculous, because only one grass species that's ever been in these parts grows tall enough to conceal the bottom of a horse (Panicum virgatum) and it is habituated to deep soils of bottom lands, not the poor rocky or sandy soil of most everywhere else in these parts. But now that there is an African juniper on record we will probably be hearing that the cedars were introduced by slaves, because as every one knows, blacks like gin, and juniper berries (Juniperus communis) of the northeast Yorenited States) are used to flavor gin.
A second hypothesis I have heard is that the verdant grasslands were maintained by the Indians who set the fires on purpose to keep the land a verdant grassland. This may be, but it is also clear that the juniper-oak woodlands do not burn easily, and due to the high humidity of these parts, and relatively high precipitation, oak-juniper woodland is in no way comparable to the true fire disclimax produced communities of the much drier western Yorenited States.
So about all that can be said on the topic of pre-white folk plant communities on the Edwards Plateau is that at various times there was more or less grassland and more or less oak-juniper woodland. And since everyone is free to have an hypothesis or two, my definition of the word (hypothesis) being, a potential lie awaiting exposure, I will venture one (hypothesis). In the absence of human disturbance events and major climatic changes, there occur places, where certain plants are so uniquely adapted, that nothing can happen at that place to change their occupation of that place as the preponderant dominant species or complex of species. Here are some examples I have noticed from long and repeated observation.
a) buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) patch community - These are found in low relief areas with moderate soil depth and high permeability. Areas are typically small, more or less oval in shape and the plant community is buffalo grass and a few native forbs of little consequence.
b) shrub communities of the western Edwards Plateau - These are found in areas of low precipitation, high permeability, much relative runoff and moderate to high relief. Due to these meterological and edpahic characteristics, dominants on these spots are various kinds of shrubs of the genera (Condalia, Diospyros, Fraxinus, Quercus) and trees of many species that never get very big because they can not tolerate the spot (microhabitat) weather and edaphics as trees so they stay little or die. These areas are also the absolutely uncontested and immutable home of the black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla).
c) Glen Rose slopes midgrass community - These are found, as described in the preceding name, on subsets of the Glen Rose slopes, a fairly big subset of the eastern Edwards Plateau, with seep muhly (Muhlenbergia revechonnii) as the dominant plant, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and tall grama (Bouteloua pectinata) are also included variously. Again, something is going on in terms of soils, slope and moisture to allow for the persistence of this community, no matter what. (If you could get a really short horse and a really tiny cowboy, you might be able to replicate the mythical tall grassland of the verdant Edwards Plateau here, pictorially. And actually, I am thinking of doing just that. If anyone has access to a Hopalong Cassidy and Topper figurine, please see me after the show).
d) Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) is the climax dominant over huge areas of the Edwards Plateau and there's nothing mere mortals can do about that.
_______ Yikes, No. No. No. Somebody needs to interrupt me when I digress so. I didn't mean to go there. I really pivoted. So on to #3 with supersonic speed..
3) Gluttony offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. Since 1933 the US government has paid out huge sums of the tax payer's money to private landowners for cedar/juniper control. Millions of acres have been treated. Often the same acreage has been treated multiple times. These treatments, mechanical , chemical and lately a combination of mechanical and fire were designed to promote a grassland or grassland- shrubland disclimax more agreeable to domestic livestock, cows and goats, than juniper-oak woodland. How many times have I heard, no herbs grow under the cedar/juniper. Yeah right. It would be interesting to discover if the production of cattle and goats on the treated acreage has actually increased from 1933 to the present time and at what cost to the tax payer.
4) Lying offends Druids and that makes for a more dangerous environment. The latest Republican technical lie is that cedars/ junipers use up all the water via evapo-transpiration that we humans and our domestics, quasi- domestics (white-tailed deer) require, or may in the future, require for ourselves. Many erstwhile studies, also paid for by tax dollars, have attempted to prove this hypothesis and these experiments do appear to show that if an area is denuded of trees, an initial flush of groundwater will result. After that, when and if sufficient herbaceous vegetation recovers in the area, data collected so far has been insufficiently fabricated to demonstrate a conclusive trend. For you see, herbaceous plants evapotranspire too, and you have to maintain them in sufficient quantity to keep the poor shallow soil from eroding away to bare rock.
5) Monocultures offend the Goddess and that makes for a more dangerous environment. Often, on the 24,000,000 million acre Edwards Plateau of central Texas, denuding an area of its cedar/juniper results in the establishment of a fine stand of King Ranch bluestem (Bothrichloa ischaemum) in its place. This species, its common name not withstanding, (another technical lie) is a native of Central Asia that has been widely introduced for erosion control. It is a favorite of the Texas Department of Transportation in this capacity and is therefore, now ubiquitous on road shoulders throughout central Texas. A bunch grass species tolerant of fire and mowing, and of little value as forage for wildlife or domestic livestock, KR now forms dense monocultural stands along highways and has escaped or been seeded into adjacent disturbed landscapes to the extent that it is now ubiquitous. So every time cedars/junipers are cleared, KR moves into the vacuum and increases to the exclusion of native herbaceous plants. An example, is the Wheless Preserve, the largest single preserve entity in the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve system of Travis County , Texas. On this preserve, with a primary function to provide habitat for the endangered golden- cheeked warbler, when the canopy opens, KR becomes the dominant plant species in that opening. Two open areas on the preserve and adjacent open woodlands, accounting for several hundred acres of the preserve, have KR monocultures including a 100 plus acre black-capped vireo restoration site. KR isn't of much use to an arboreal, insectivorous warbler, and there have never been any black-capped vireos recorded at this preserve, or for that matter before it was a preserve, during the 30 odd years people have been looking for them out there.
6) The Goddess is offended by redundancy and that makes for a more dangerous environment. A whole bunch of plants are endemic (found nowhere else in the world) or nearly so, to the juniper- oak woodlands of the Edwards Plateau. Some of these are, tapped below from the North America Regional Center of Endemism: CPD Site NA32 web site: Topping the list are the beautiful and endangered Styrax texana and the threatened Styrax platanifolia, known from a few canyons in the Hill Country (Gonsoulin 1974). The rare, beautiful and probably endangered Salvia penstemonoides deserves an early listing, followed by: Dalea sabinalis (Barneby 1977), Streptanthus bracteatus, Crataegus secreta (Phipps 1990), Philadelphus ernestii, P. texanus, Penstemon triflorus, Carex edwardsensis (Bridges and Orzell 1989), Seymeria texana (Turner 1982), Tridens buckleyanus (Gould 1975), Anemone edwardsiana, Penstemon helleri, Matelea edwardsensis, Amsonia tharpii, Ancistrocactus tobuschii, Onosmodium helleri, Erigeron mimegletes, Tragia nigricans, Berberis swaseyi, Amorpha texana (Wilbur 1975), Hesperaloë parviflora, Galactia texana, Opuntia edwardsensis (Grant and Grant 1979, 1982), Kuhnia leptophylla (Turner 1989), Perityle lindheimeri (Powell 1974), Tradescantia edwardsiana, Chaetopappa effusa (Nesom 1988), C. bellidifolia (Nesom 1988), Quercus laceyi, Vitis monticola (Moore 1991), Buddleja racemosa, Garrya lindheimeri (Dahling 1978) and Verbesina lindheimeri. Lots of other plants, including a bunch of really cool ones are nearly endemic to these juniper-oak woodlands of the Edwards Plateau.
Oh well. I nearly forgot. Lots of humans and almost humans, including me, are allergic to juniper pollen which blows around these parts from about November through February. This pollen is a great boon to the allergy doctors in these parts.
Lots of wildlife like junipers a whole lot (especially the berries it produces and the numerous insects it houses) and the golden-cheeked warbler is totally reliant on Juniperus ashei for replication habitat.
The wood of junipers is resistant to decay and so is used for fenceposts, Junipeus ashei, and cedar chests, Juniperus virginiana. Ah, there's nothing like the aroma of a good cedar chest.
_________
Well, I could go on for a good while longer on this subtopic, and may yet, another day , but I think you can see how dangerous the absence of cedars/junipers really is. Thanks for you attention to this. She's all yours Red.
Thank ye Crumby Ovate. We will definitely tote this up as a Potential Safety Topic - environmental hazard - Absence of Cedars/Junipers. We may need to do some OT in these parts relating to this subtopic. There's coffee for those goin and a Welcome Before All of You.
* The binding on the earlier editions falls off after some use. So these are the paperback editions. Glen Rose may have the first of the first paperback edition.
posted by ray pistrum at Sunday, July 17, 2005
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