Hazard for one, wonder for the other

Rick Halsey is in search of senile shrubs. He rolls up California 79 in his Chevy pickup across the tablelands of eastern San Diego County. In a shallow basin called Indian Flats, he comes to a stop.

The rangy naturalist strides across a ditch, climbs the side of a boulder, crouches in the shade of a 15-foot manzanita and gazes at the red skin of its bark. “This might be 125 years old,'' he said.

He knows many forest managers would call this old hardwood “senescent'' or “decadent'' — terms for native vegetation that has supposedly gone unburnt for too long and is a fire hazard.

Halsey, 53, likes to point out the absurdity of this theory, as he sees it, by simply calling the plants “senile'', as if the manzanita were in an advanced state of dementia.

Chaparral (a type of shrubland), he said, does not need to burn to the ground every 30 years to remain healthy. In fact, it is just the opposite.

But with the help of top botanists and fire ecologists, Halsey is on a campaign to correct the record about California's most widespread, misunderstood and maligned type of vegetation.

The former high school biology teacher founded the California Chaparral Institute, a non-profit environmental group and gives talks all over the state.

Science to the rescue

Through science, Halsey wants to show Chaparral's subtle beauty and the limits of its remarkable adaptations to survive. It is a lesson in the ecology of drought and fire.

The story of the senile Eastwood's manzanita, its muscular root anchored to fissures in the granite boulder, is as good a way as any to start it.

The stocky stalwart with a bright green head of leaves was actually born of fire.

As a seed, it fell from its parent and, by good fortune, landed in a crevice in the rock where water and dead leaf matter naturally amassed. It may not have sprouted for years.

Then came a fire. Smoke from its incinerated forebears woke the seed.

Scientists don't understand the precise chemical mechanism of this process, but it is the only way to germinate the five species of manzanita in Southern California, as well as many other endemic plants. As fire destroys one generation, it primes a new crop.

The epiphany

Hiking through the chaparral and coastal sage scrub of Southern California, Halsey never gave much thought to the shrubs.

It wasn't until the mid-1980s, when he was teaching biology at Serra High School in San Diego on a windy day and a crusty old sycamore leaf drifted through the door like a drunken epiphany. “Let's go down in the canyon,'' he told students.

Halsey didn't know much about the plant life but he knew his insects and birds.

Soon, he had his students help him cut a trail and he held two lessons a week in the canyon next to school.

But he was at a loss for words when it came to the vegetation. He asked another teacher, an amateur botanist, to teach him about the plants in the canyon. “It was an explosion of knowledge for me,'' he said.

All of this variation is a product of the geological commotion that gives Southern California its earthquakes.

Perhaps the most remarkable are the perennials that rise like the phoenix from a fire's ruins.

When chaparral burns, the smoke awakens wildflower seeds lying dormant in the soil. Some of these may not have sprouted for a century or more. The problem is, nowadays, that might come too soon.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is debating whether to start burning swaths of the back country. This basin would be a prime candidate.