Salutations fellow Phytophiles,
Whether you’re just a brown-thumbed beginner, or a flourishing master in the garden, we always like to recommend the following guide…as not only a vital compendium for all your needs amidst butterfly sonnets, but a rather attractive illustrated book for your shelves.
We present to you John Hunter Thomas’ Flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains: A Manual of the Vascular Plants. This glorious hardcover features economically essential plants for your greenhouse -Hunter’s 434 page guide is bloated with introductory divisions of Pterophyta + Lepidophyta (to mention just a few). But what follows are chapters which fluctuate between stratigraphic columns of rocks, interdigitation of plant communities, and streambank vegetation. Not for sale, but a featured book from our archive. Stanford University Press, circa 1961.
An excerpt: Synonyms are included only for convenience in referring to the same taxon in other regional and sectional floras. The type localities of many proposed taxa occur within the Santa Cruz Mountains. I have made no attempt to list or include these taxa unless they are still considered to be valid. A number of species such as the Berberis darwinii and Viburnum tinus have been observed growing spontaneously. One can predict that in the next few years quite a large number of additional plants will be found as occasional escapes from cultivation, or as accidental or deliberate introductions.