Restoring a thorny situation

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

When faced with restoring the Shipley Nature Center on a shoestring

budget, creativity is called for. Sometimes fate lends a helping

hand.

Last month Vic and I attended an event at the Rancho Santa Ana

Botanic Garden hosted by the Metropolitan Water District. We had been

invited because I had helped the city write a grant that was pending

in the water district’s City Makeover Program. The money would help

restore Shipley.

The winning applicant would get $75,000 from the water district to

demonstrate landscaping with California native plants to save water.

Second place was a grant of $25,000. We came in third out of nine and

got nothing. At least we beat out Mile Square Park’s nature center

and the Fullerton Arboretum. Not that we have a competitive attitude

or anything.

At the event, we were seated at a table with Doug and Judy McGoun

from Claremont. The McGouns had recently purchased some undeveloped

property covered with native coastal sage scrub. They told us that

they plan to remove some natives and plant others for the new

landscaping around their house.

We saw an opportunity and seized it. We asked if we could have the

plants they were going to eliminate. They were more than happy to see

the plants go to a good home. All we had to do was go to Claremont,

dig them up, transport them to Huntington Beach and transplant them.

They warned us that most of the surplus was cactus. Oh terrific,

where could we find someone willing to transplant cactus?

We have a number of friends whose minds slipped a gear long ago,

so finding help was no problem. My crazy cousins Laura and John Klure

from Riverside met us in Claremont with a truck. We spent Friday

morning digging prickly pear and cholla out of what Laura told us was

“unconsolidated Pleistocene alluvium.” We like having friends who use

the word Pleistocene in their conversations. But practically

speaking, it meant we were digging in an ancient streambed of round

rocks with only a little sand in between, a nearly impossible task.

Doug and Judy stopped by and pointed out some California sagebrush

and deerweed seedlings that we could have as well.

By noon, we were ready for lunch, so we headed for Alice’s

Breakfast in the Park. Then we unloaded our transplants, about 125 of

them.

On Saturday, Denise Ruocco, Buffy Harris, and John Fisher helped

me plant the cactus on the slope by the observation blind in the

southeast corner of the nature center. John dug the holes and I

handled the cactus. Denise watered them and arranged rocks around the

new plantings to mark them and help hold the moisture. Every so

often, yelps of pain arose from the slope as one or the other of us

got stuck. Denise and Buffy planted all the deerweed and sagebrush,

but most of cactus remained in pots for planting another day when

more ground is cleared of weeds and brave volunteers are available.

Some might be surprised that we’re planting cactus at the Shipley

Nature Center. When we think of cactus, if we think of it at all, we

think of the desert. Most people wouldn’t associate cactus with cool,

foggy Huntington Beach. But during the era when Native Americans

inhabited the area, at least four species of cactus grew on the

coast. We’re just bringing them back home.

Coast cholla, coast barrel cactus and two species of coast prickly

pear grew in scattered locations all along the coastal bluffs and

mesas before arrival of the Spaniards. For thousands of years, local

Tongva Native Americans, called Gabrielenos by the Spaniards,

gathered the ripe red fruits of prickly pears for a sweet snack. They

ate the young green pads as well. Today, we find prickly pear jelly

in specialty shops. Young pads from prickly pear cactus, called

nopales, are sold either fresh or bottled in jars in local grocery

stores. They’re great in a salad, especially mixed with green beans.

As the land that is Huntington Beach changed from a natural

landscape to cattle country to farms to houses, the cactus

disappeared. During the rancho era in the 1800s, vaqueros rode

Huntington mesa clad in heavy leather chaparejos (chaps) to protect

their legs from the spiny cactus stands. The Mexican vaqueros and

later the American cowboys didn’t like getting stuck by cactus any

more than we did, and their cattle didn’t like eating it, so they

yanked out the cactus by dragging heavy chains across the cactus

patches.

Today, only remnant patches of cactus remain along the Orange

coast, mainly in Laguna and Dana Point. The Bolsa Chica Stewards have

restored some cactus to the bluffs along outer Bolsa Bay. Now cactus

has returned to Shipley Nature Center as well. It will become an

important part of the coastal sage scrub habitat. People will be able

to see what Orange County looked like in the days of the Tongvas,

before the cowboys and their cattle changed the landscape.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].