Sedgwick Reserve

To learn about grassland and oak woodland communities we visited Sedgwick Reserve – one of the gems in the University of California’s Natural Reserve System. The NRS is truly remarkable. Established as a network of protected sites that would broadly represent California's rich ecological diversity, the system now includes a total of 36 reserves that encompass approximately 130,000 acres of protected natural land available for university-level instruction, research, and public outreach. It is the largest university-operated system of natural reserves in the world. The people who initially conceived of this system, and work to maintain it are visionaries and heroes in my opinion!

Back to Sedgwick… this is one of, if not THE largest of the reserves in the NRS and is right in our “backyard”. This nearly 6000 acre former ranch is located at the base of Figueroa Mountain in the Santa Ynez Valley in the center of our county. The reserve is diverse in its environmental conditions (large elevational gradient, distinctive geologic formations, two distinct watersheds) and vegetation types, which include coast live oak forest, blue oak woodland, valley oak savannah, buckbrush chaparral, coastal sage scrub, grassland, willow riparian forest, and agricultural lands. The natural communities we focused on were grassland and oak woodland.
Your book, “An Island Called California”, has two very nice and relevant chapters – “California’s Kansas”, and “Woodpeckers in Oak Trees”.

Two more reading suggestions (I love these books and refer to them often in my own work):
Oaks of California, by Bruce Pavlik, Pamela Muick, Sharon Johnson, and Marjorie Popper

The Life of an Oak, by Glenn Keator

Two of the epiphytes we saw, especially on valley oaks (Quercus lobata), function quite differently in relation to the tree they’re found on. The first was mistletoe (Phoradendron villosum), the hemiparasite that derives all its water and mineral nutrients from the host tree. The second was lace lichen (Ramalina menziesii), which most likely does no harm to the tree itself, and in fact provides its host/the oak with wind-borne nutrients that are captured, run off the lichen when it rains, and are deposited in the soil below the tree canopy.

Check out these nice descriptions of lace lichen and oak mistletoe on the UC Hastings Reserve website. (Hastings is yet another gem in the NRS system!)

Thanks to Josh and Britta for the nice photos from our trip.

Map to our field trip site: