PART TWO: CULTURAL 



CHAPTER VII 



CLEARING LAND FOR FRUIT 



The greater part of the orchard and vineyard area of this State was 

 naturally almost clear for planting. The removal of large trees, which 

 paid the cost of the work in firewood, or the grubbing out of willows 

 on some especially rich bottom land, was about the extent of clearing 

 which our earlier planters had to undertake, and many of them perhaps 

 never had to lift an axe. Still there has always been some clearing 

 done, here and there, even since the earliest days, especially upon 

 hill lands, the peculiar value of which for some fruits is generally 

 recognized. 



The lands which need clearing are in the main foothill slopes of the 

 Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada. In the south there is besides, 

 sometimes, the debris of the desert flora to clear away when water is 

 secured and the rich wilderness is subdued. This work is, however, 

 so easily accomplished that it hardly rises to the dignity of "clearing," 

 as understood by the Eastern mind. 



It is not possible in this connection to enumerate all of the great 

 variety of shrubs and trees which the settler lays low in his clearing. 

 The grand trees which figure most largely in lumbering operations are 

 not met with as a rule in foothill clearings. The trees which the 

 settler encounters are rather the degraded valley growths, which, though 

 assuming grand proportions in the valleys, become "scrubs" amid the 

 harsher environment of the hillsides. This is notably true of the oaks 

 and some other trees. 



Chamisal and Chaparral. Of true shrubs to be removed, it will 

 only be possible to name a few of the most abunant. The common man- 

 zanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita) occurs on dry ridges everywhere, 

 both on the coast and at great elevations, sometimes only growing a 

 few inches from the ground, sometimes rising eight or ten feet. Next 

 to this, perhaps, the two terms which the land clearer has most to use 

 are "chaparral" and "chamisal." To distinguish between them it may 

 be said, however, that the term chamisal properly applies to the shrub 

 Adenostoma fasciculatum var. obtusi folium, which is abundant on 

 dry soils in the Coast Ranges and more rarely in the foothills of the 

 Sierra Nevada, often covering extensive areas with dense and almost 

 impenetrable growth, producing an effect on the landscape like that 

 of the heaths of the Old World. Another species, A. sparsifolium, with 

 narrow, scattered leaves, is sometimes abundant on the mountains east 

 of San Diego. 



By chaparral is generally meant shrubs of several species of 

 Ceanothus, forming dense thickets and giving its name to certain soils 

 on which it most abounds, both in the Sierra foothills and the hillsides 

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