Another decade and, boy, is it warm! I walked Coon Creek on January 7 and one trillium was in flower, and cardamine and hedge nettle, deer weed, and some other

things were all convinced it was spring already. The ceanothus in my yard has finished flowering already. This might be just fine provided we don't have a cold snap, but

the downer is that the lack of anything resembling a hard frost is allowing cape ivy to continue its aggressive takeover of the understory in the Los Osos Oaks Preserve. It

can be controlled by hand-pulling, so that certain areas could be kept open, but no longer can we depend on the frosts to kill off the above-ground biomass. I would like to

talk to anyone who would like to work with me on control strategies at locations where you have noted an alien invasion.

      I am asking CNPS to work with Friends of the Carrizo Plain in amassing useful botanic information for assessing long term changes in conditions and health of rare plant

populations. I want to begin a GPS-based inventory of conditions, in which sites will be identified and photographed over an extended period of time, and I am

seeking GPSers (cache-seekers, for example) who might want to help. I am also collecting all manner of biological information to be included in a science database for the

Plain, including grey literature and hitherto undocumented locations of rare plants. You all know where to find me.

~ David Chipping