Plant Societies of Monterey Peninsula. 79 



THE PLANT SOCIETIES OF MONTEREY PENINSULA. 

 By H. B. Humphrey. 



Perhaps no locality of equal area within the confines of 

 California holds more of interest to the student of plant distri- 

 bution than does Monterey Peninsula with its rock-bound and 

 storm-beaten coast, its dunes, its wooded hills, and open level 

 meadows. The coastline of California is, comparatively speak- 

 ing, quite regular, though to the north and south of Monterey 

 Bay occur a considerable number of peninsulas, all of them 

 interesting from the view-point of the botanist or the zoologist, 

 but none of them seeming to combine so great a variety of con- 

 ditions affecting growth and distribution as characterizes the 

 region about old Monterey. 



In another number of the Plant World * the writer has, 

 in a general way, dealt with the marine life along the shores of 

 Monterey Bay, and has pointed to the fact that so far as concerns 

 the marine plants and animals of the region, the waters of Mon- 

 terey Bay seem to supply those conditions necessary to such 

 forms as are peculiar to parts of the coast far to the north as well 

 as south. To a certain extent the same is true concerning the 

 environmental factors that play upon land plants peculiar to the 

 peninsula; though of course one meets here a greater range of 

 variability affecting distribution than is ever true of the bathy- 

 metrical zones of the bay. 



Monterey Peninsula very naturally falls into six plant 

 zones or formations, which, in the order of their proximity to 

 each other are about as follows: The shore formation, sand- 

 dunes, low-lying meadows, pine and cypress forest, chaparral, 

 and the bald, wind-swept hills. 



In each formation one finds a few or many species that ap- 

 pear to be more or less characteristic of this or that particular 

 zone. For example, much of the shore-line from about the east- 

 ern limit of Pacific Grove, around the peninsula to the mouth 

 of the Carmel River is characterized by its rugged granitic fringe 

 of sea-worn rock, projecting well out into the sea, and subject 

 to the ceaseless pounding of the waves. The erosive action of 

 heavy winter storms, even upon the most exposed and unin- 

 viting of these granite prominences, has laid down sufficient 



♦The Plant World, X: 245. 1907 



