16 CALIFORNIA GARDEN FLOWERS. 



that a single owner may have practically all the climates of a county 

 on his own place each with its own favors and hardships for garden 

 plants. 



It 'becomes then unquestionably imperative that the intelligent 

 grower of plants shall know his climate, shall choose his plants and 

 modify his cultures to meet the conditions which that climate imposes. 

 It is true to say 'that to grow flowers in California one must know 

 California. It is more exact to say that he must know that particular 

 piece of California upon which he proposes to produce and enjoy 

 the 'beautiful. 



What the Grower May Do. But lest it may be inferred from the 

 foregoing remarks that the writer prescribes choice or rejection of 

 plants strictly according to local conditions of heat, frost and moisture, 

 the fact must be emphasized that knowledge of local conditions is 

 satisfactory and valuable to the possessor not as a warning to avoid 

 plants so much as to enable him to successfully cherish them for the 

 reasons cited at the opening of this chapter. 



Although it is practicable, from the point of view of the amateur, 

 to effectively modify by artifice nearly all the natural conditions of 

 temperature, moisture, soil, texture and fertility, as will be described in 

 following chapters, and thus cause his situation to produce garden 

 plants to which it may have only partial ilatural adaptation, there are 

 still a few general characters of California climates which make the 

 effort to modify natural conditions much easier and cheaper in one 

 place than another, and these should be sketched in as a back ground 

 for the action in culture modifications which the amateur will enthus- 

 iastically undertake. Naturally the writer seeks data for general 

 characters from those who have made closest study of the subject, and 

 the following notes are compiled from the studies of California 

 climatology by Alexander G. McAdie, who in 1913 became Professor 

 of Meteorology in Harvard University, after about twenty years 

 service as director of the U. S. Weather Bureau in San Francisco. * 

 Prof. McAdie is however not to be held responsible for this presenta- 

 tion of his conclusions. The writer has adapted them to his present 

 purpose and has indulged in interpolations which perhaps will surprise 

 most of all the scientific author whose words are, as we may say, 

 floridified. 



Why We Have So Many Climates. The groups of meteorological 

 phenomena which are popularly designated as the "local climates of 

 California" are produced by certain great causes, modified in their 

 effects by topographical conditions. These great determinative causes 

 proceed from the Pacific Ocean on the one hand and from the great 



* "Climatology of California," U. S. Weather Bureau Bulletin L, 1903; "The Rain- 

 fall of California," University of California Publications in Geography, 1914. 



