Author: Phila Rogers

The Arboreal Internet

Phila Rogers Nature , , ,
“One for all, and all for one” – Dumas
(Illustration courtesy Kauai Seascape Nursery)

Before taking a deep dive underground, I must pay tribute to leaves for their remarkable abilities. If a predator begins munching on the leaves of one tree, that tree sends a chemical signal to nearby trees warning them to mount their defenses. The neighboring trees respond by sending substances into their leaves which makes them unpalatable. And it is in the leaves where photosynthesis takes place by combining water, sunlight and absorbed carbon dioxide to produce sugar, the staple food for the tree and nutritional support for nearby trees in need through the mycelium network under the ground.

The Underground Network

Mushrooms are the part of the fruiting cycle where
scattered spores keep the mycelium growing
(Illustration courtesy Kauai Seascape Nursery)

Mycelium are threadlike strands of fungi that attach themselves to tree roots of different species, creating what one researcher calls “nature’s world-wide web.” Trees have a way of communicating with one another. They can send nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus to an ailing neighbor, making up part of the vast system that supplies water and nutrients to undernourished trees nearby. And the underground network also sends warning messages and alerts about impending conditions like drought.

Understanding the language of trees is an ever-expanding field of research, and for the student like myself, this knowledge deepens my awareness of trees. No longer can I consider trees non-sentient beings as I once believed. Their own particular form of “intelligence” may help trees survive in a changing world.

The Wind in the Trees

Phila Rogers Local interest, Nature , ,

I love the wind, the way it animates the landscape by setting trees into motion and sends clouds scudding across the sky. Samarkand is not only a senior living facility, but also an arboretum, with 350 individual trees representing 35 species, many of them labeled. Here I can further hone my skills identifying trees. As Canary Island Pines sift the wind with their slender needles, they murmur and sigh. With their long leathery leaves, blue gum eucalyptus trees sound in a good wind like falling water. The palms are the noisiest of all, and their colliding fronds remind me of the sound of a downpour falling on a metal roof.

Recently, three of us decided to listen to trees in a different way. We engaged retired doctor Bill Macpherson and his stethoscope to hear the sounds produced by both a redbud and a sycamore tree that were each producing a new crop of fresh leaves. Pressing the cup of the stethoscope against the thin bark, we each got different results. Bill heard a sound like water rushing up a pipe. I heard faint popping sounds and a low-pitched gurgle. Ann Allen, perhaps less susceptible than Bill and I, heard nothing. We plan to wait for a hot day and try again.

A Softer World

Phila Rogers Nature , ,

When my 95th birthday came around in the first week of April, I suggested to my son that we take a ride over the mountains to the Santa Ynez Valley. In this second generous winter in a row when rainfall exceeded the annual normal, I was eager to see the green landscape. My son doubted I could see much. 

But I had a new strategy. I would look carefully and then I would employ what I call “historical memory.” When I saw the elegant Valley Oak in its pasture I remembered from earlier times its far reaching branches and the scalloped leaves unfurling. I saw the black cattle and I recalled again how they stood belly deep in the fresh grass. When we passed a small tree with billowing pale blossoms, I knew it was a light blue ceanothus.

Life is different now that I have lost half my eyesight. It is a softer world, as if enveloped in a light haze. I’m taking out my paints again so I can show you what I mean and how each vivid orange poppy still calls attention to itself. And above all, the skies filled with April clouds truly speak to me with their vaporous edges and changing shapes.

On Growing Up in Santa Barbara – SHIRLEY ROBY

Phila Rogers Local interest , ,

Shirley Roby was born at Cottage Hospital in 1942. Home was just around the corner near Oak Park. Before she was a year old, she and her parents moved to Hillcrest Road on the back side of the Riviera. The home had generous gardens, a pond and is still the family home, presently occupied by her daughter and husband.

With no school bus serving children in the hills, most mornings Shirley traveled down the hill to Jefferson Elementary School with her father, who was a banker in town. Her mother was a local historian who wrote regular columns in the Santa Barbara News- Press and authored a book about the Santa Barbara Fiesta.

Shirley started playing the violin at 5 years old and, like Alita Rhodes, played in the city-wide summer orchestra and went to YWCA camps at Pine Mountain and on Catalina Island.

After graduating from Santa Barbara High School, she headed north to attend Lewis and Clark College in Portland, which is where she met her husband-to-be, Kib.

The Eastern Sierra drew the family away over the years, first to Lake Mary and then to – Lake George. Later, Shirley and Kib (assisted by their two children) owned and operated the Rock Creek Lodge – at 9,300 feet, a popular jumping-off place for hikers and fishermen.

Sandstone — Santa Barbara’s Backbone

Phila Rogers History, Nature , , , , ,

When I got to know fellow Samarkand resident Irene Coker, I learned she had her own Santa Barbara story. Though born in Santa Barbara, she grew up elsewhere, returning when she was 18 years old. But her great-uncles had come to Santa Barbara years before from Italy, working first as gardeners in Mission Canyon and then later as stone masons, constructing walls near the Mission.

It was the talented stone masons from Italy who gave Santa Barbara its distinctive look with their handcrafted buildings, walls and bridges, many made using our local sandstone.

A trip to the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden in Mission Canyon will show you even earlier uses of sandstone. In a climate with a short rainy season, the Mission Fathers realized they would have to store water to see them through the long dry season. You can still see the dam built by the Chumash people in the early 1800s under the supervision of the Mission Fathers. The water was impounded by the dam and later traveled down to the Mission gardens via aqueducts. At the Garden, you can also see one of the immense boulders brought down from the mountains in an earlier debris flow.

I love the sandstone features all over town, I’m glad most of the sandstone remains on the mountain slopes, because when we walk at the end of the day the setting sun turns the sandstone a glowing orange as if illuminated from within.

In Celebration Of Clouds

Phila Rogers Nature

I call it the landscape of the sky.

With my fading eyesight, the landscape around me is confused by haze, but the sky is brightly lit and clouds do not require precise vision.

The sky is best viewed while lying supine, a position kind to my tired bones. If I drift off, the landscape may have changed without me. Some clouds have dissolved altogether, reclaimed by the empty sky, while other small clouds may have been claimed by a larger one.

I must be imagining it but it seems to me the cloudscape is the boundary land between earth and outer space, or maybe even a border between living and dying.

Sometimes those high, thin, wispy clouds are the leading edge of an approaching storm. And when the clouds sink toward the earth heavy with moisture, I am glad.

When the storm has passed, the north wind drives the white-sailed galleons along the horizon, their cargo spent.

Autumn In Santa Barbara? Yes!

Phila Rogers Nature , , ,

Maybe we can’t brag about brilliant splashes of color everywhere like they can back east, since Fall is subtler in California, but there are still clear signs that the seasons are changing. As the days grow shorter, shadows grow longer, giving a rich, baroque look to the landscape. The air achieves a balance between the cool, damp marine flow and the drier air of the mountains. The breeze has a tantalizing sweetness of ripening fruits and crumbling leaves.

In the Native Plant Garden behind Eastview, you’ll see the billowy bushes of the Toyon, whose succulent berries will be red by Christmas. Further down is the sprawling “Roger’s Red,” a subspecies of the California wild grape. The White-crowned Sparrows arrived in October and fill the garden with their sweet songs.

In Oak Park, the leaves on the big sycamores are tawny now. Around town, you’ll see liquid amber trees, with a palette of oranges and maroons, and the ginkgo trees will soon turn a pure brilliant yellow. The lone survivor of an ancient species, these trees shared a landscape with the dinosaurs.

Fall is not just about plants. It’s also about critters—the big Orb Weavers that weave symmetrical webs and then plant themselves in the center waiting for trapped insects. And if you find yourself in the dry country, look for the astonishing sight of tarantulas on the trails in search of mates.

The Trees Above Us

Phila Rogers Nature ,

We love our trees at Samarkand. And no wonder. There are about 350 of them on campus, representing 36 different species. Some have seasonal flowers; others are deliciously fragrant even without blooms. One is tall enough to “dust the sky.” Others are broad enough to provide shade on hot days. They give form and shape to the cultivated semi-tropical gardens that grace our 16-acre knoll.

No wonder so many people come here for their final days!

Joyce and Allan Anderson, Magdy Farahat and I worked together to gather information to create labels for many of the trees around the campus. The labels will have both the common and the scientific names of the trees and will be large enough to be easily read. We plan to create a map showing the location of these trees.

The Man Who Loves Fig Trees

Phila Rogers Nature ,
Moreton Bay Fig Tree, Santa Barbara

When the Native Plant Garden was installed five years ago, it was decided to leave the old fig tree, although it wasn’t a California native. The tree managed to survive on its lean ration of water. Several months ago new neighbors moved into Eastview, Marty and Magdy Farahat, she a doctorate in music and a flutist and he a retired nuclear engineer. He had been raised in Alexandria, Egypt, a place with a similar climate to ours with a rainy winter and a long, dry summer. Thanks to our long, wet winter, the fig developed a new set of large green leaves. Magdy was inspired to introduce a potted fig to his patio. He also successfully rooted a small branch from the tree. Here was a man who clearly loved fig trees. The fig, an ancient species from Asia spread to the Mediterranean world where for centuries it was revered by the Roman, Greek and Egyptian cultures. In a unique arrangement, the fig fruit itself contains its flowers which are pollinated by a tiny fig wasp that slips into the fruit with pollen on its wings. To add the pleasure of scent to his patio, Magdy found an Arabian jasmine (Jasminum sambac) a local nursery. Its exquisite fragrance pervades the neighborhood of Eastview.