ACCLIMATIZATION U^ 



ACCLIMAll/AriON OF PLANTS AT DEL 

 MONTK, CALIFORNIA. 



However much we may credit the plant with power to 

 adapt itself to strange surroundinfjjs, or with ability to dodge 

 the climatic cjuestion, the fact remains that the natural 

 habitats of the introduced plants at Del Monte are the most 

 diverse possible, and that many of them are also very different 

 from the climate at Del Monte itslef. The following few 

 illustrations will show the extremes in habitati conditions: 



Piniis sylvt'slris occurs in Kurope as far north as latitude 

 68°. At latitude 67 34', ^'erkhyansk, Siberia, the yearly 

 exteremes of temperature are from - 79.6 in winter to 86° 

 F. in summer. This is an annual range in temperature of 

 165.6 F. Probably the opposite extreme is to be found in 

 the habitats of plants of the deserts, as, for instance, that 

 of the date palm, or that of the Washington palm. One 

 station of the former is at Biskra In the Sahara, where the 

 winter temperature goes to 43 F. and the summer tempera- 

 ture reaches 10^' F. Ihe Washington palm is native in 

 the Colorado desert of our own country, where the annual 

 extremes in temperature are from 43" F. to 112" F. The 

 annual extremes in temperature at Del Monte are not avail- 

 able, but those at San Francisco, 100 miles distant, are from 

 39° F. in winter to 98 F. In summer. The xariation in the 

 annual rainfall of the habitats represented is quite as striking. 

 It ranges from 2.97 inches in the Colorado desert to 92.58 

 inches In the Puget Sound region; and probal)ly the precipita- 

 tion in the Himalayas, the home of Cedriis deodara, is even 

 greater. The annual rainfall at Del Monte is given at 14 

 inches, but the proximity of the ocean so reduces natural 

 evaporation that this small amount is probably the equivalent 

 of a much greater precipitation farther Inland. 



In the cases of most of the Introduced plants growing in 

 the open at Del Monte, it is probably true that the native 

 environments He well within the extremes given for the 

 palms and the pine in the preceding paragraph. 



