© 2009 Wendy Dager

Cue the creepy, sci-fi music. Uncover your eyes and take a look at a potentially life-threatening alien invader that’s even scarier than something you’d see in a Hollywood horror film. Who’s this villain?

Nonnative grasses.

While wildfires are a natural occurrence in Southern California, their frequency is on the upswing due to profound ecological changes. The source of these fires varies from arson to carelessly tossed cigarettes to—in the case of the May 2009 Santa Barbara Jesusita fire—accidents caused by gasoline-powered machinery employed to clear brush. However, a major facilitator is the presence of nonnative annual plants and grasses, which provide a great deal of fuel for Southern California fires.

These nonnatives have been allowed to proliferate because there has not been enough effort made to reseed disturbed hillsides with native perennials, which promote recovery as well as stabilize slopes.

It used to be that some hillsides were reseeded directly after a fire with nonnatives in order to facilitate regrowth. This is no longer a recommended practice, as nonnative species such as annual ryegrass becomes dry and flammable in autumn—prime time for fire season—and also takes over native stands of plants such as mesquite and cottonwood.

Of particular concern is the nonnative mustard plant, a Mediterranean forb that produces large amounts of fuel due to its dried stalks. Its seeds are not damaged by fire, allowing it to easily reproduce and take over the natives, creating a cycle that becomes more intense year after year, threatening homes, property and the lives of residents and firefighters. The Leaf-let addressed this in 2004, with the article “Reseeding After a Wildfire a Hot Topic.” We told you that, while some environmental groups suggest waiting for “natural revegetation,” it likely won’t occur with their preferred method of hydromulching. Instead, S&S Seeds strongly supports a managed reseeding process—one that takes into consideration Southern California’s weather pattern and fire season. Specifically, we believe that using mulch—usually a mixture of wood chips and paper, along with native grass and native forb seeding, is the best way to reseed a hillside following a fire. We recommend quick-germinating native grasses such as California Brome (Bromus carinatus) and Small Fescue (Vulpia Microstachys), which provide the most erosion control over the life of a revegetation process. A mycorrhizal inoculant should also be used in conjunction with mulch and native seed because of the degradation of the endomycorrhize populations—the beneficial fungi growing on a plant’s roots.

At S&S Seeds, our goal is to provide our customers with the best information and the most cost effective way to approach every project.

For more information about native seed and other products, visit our Web site at http://www.ssseeds.com or call us at (805) 684-0436.

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