Seedlings

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation. It would give him hope after a year of disappointment. Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

From the start, there were indications that the U.S. Forest Service didn't respond aggressively enough during the 2009 Station fire in the Angeles National Forest. Now there are signs that it moved too aggressively to plant a million seedlings in an attempt at post-fire reforestation. As Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports, only about a fourth of the pine and fir seedlings have survived so far, less than a third of the hoped-for number. Dry conditions this year would have made things difficult in any event, but many mistakes were surprisingly avoidable: planting in areas that experts now agree are too steep and rocky for tree survival; planting species that either aren't native to the area or weren't growing in those specific areas before; planting at too low an elevation; and planting more trees than typically grow in these areas.

The strains of a Mexican pop tune wafted from a radio mounted on the planting rig being towed by a tractor across the farm field. Dragged behind on runners mounted with bucket seats sat a crew of eight planters, trays of cauliflower seedlings on their laps. As the odd assemblage moved along, the planters dropped seedlings into eight moistened holes punched into the rows by jets of water.

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation. It would give him hope after a year of disappointment. Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

Hank Brokaw, an avocado and citrus nurseryman who played a crucial role in the development of California's avocado industry, died Wednesday at his home in Santa Paula. He was 82. He had suffered several strokes over the last two years and had been in declining health, said his daughter Elena. Since the early years of the California avocado industry in the 1920s, the most serious problem confronting growers was a fungal disease later identified as Phytophthora cinnamomi , commonly known as avocado root rot. By the 1950s, scientists discovered a few individual seedlings that were tolerant to this disease and thus suited for use as rootstock, the bottom part of the tree on which the fruiting variety, such as Hass or Fuerte, would be grafted.

From the start, there were indications that the U.S. Forest Service didn't respond aggressively enough during the 2009 Station fire in the Angeles National Forest. Now there are signs that it moved too aggressively to plant a million seedlings in an attempt at post-fire reforestation. As Times staff writer Louis Sahagun reports, only about a fourth of the pine and fir seedlings have survived so far, less than a third of the hoped-for number. Dry conditions this year would have made things difficult in any event, but many mistakes were surprisingly avoidable: planting in areas that experts now agree are too steep and rocky for tree survival; planting species that either aren't native to the area or weren't growing in those specific areas before; planting at too low an elevation; and planting more trees than typically grow in these areas.

Seedlings, some only a couple of inches tall, are sprouting in parts of a rare forest of Tecate cypress trees in fenced-off wilderness canyons in the extreme northeast corner of Orange County. Shaped like perfect little Christmas trees, they are growing brave and straight and green in reddish soil that is little more than finely crushed rock. Cones and fragments of bark have been found at La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, indicating that they grew that far north about 30,000 years ago.

Companion planting is based on the idea that, like people, some plants do better with good neighbors. For tomatoes, strawberries and squash, one of the most popular of companion plants is borage ( Borago officinalis ). As a seedling, borage doesn't reveal its potential. The leaves are rough and fat, and as they get older, covered in fur. Only when the sparkling lavender star-shaped flowers appear in spring-summer does borage, also known as starflower, shows its potential: Bees and pest-killing wasps love the blooms.

BELVIDERE, N.J. - Amid the whir of fans and the glow of soft white light, workers tended to bright green seedlings sprouting in a giant greenhouse. Located about an hour's drive from Manhattan in the hills of northwestern New Jersey, the facility produces basil, chives, oregano and other herbs that are sold in grocery stores around New York City. But if Ken VandeVrede has his way the facility will one day be growing a much more valuable plant: marijuana. VandeVrede is chief operating officer at Terra Tech, a hydroponic equipment maker based in Irvine.

In the heart of the Wilshire Park historic district, Horacio Fuentes has built a garden with the feel of his native El Salvador. It begins by the sidewalk, where a pito coral tree grows, planted 15 years ago. It hasn't yet produced the dramatic red flowers that, when eaten, are said to prompt a deep sleep with intense, erotic dreams. Maybe it's too cold here, Fuentes said. He's had more success with his papayas. The plants are scattered around the frontyard, low enough to harvest, each with a cluster of ripening fruit pushing out from the main trunk.

On a warm July day ... We plant flowers. You'd have a better chance of growing begonias in your bellybutton than in this particular flower bed out back. I call it Four-Mile Island because it's a disaster zone like Three-Mile Island, except 33% worse. Over the years, I have spent hundreds of dollars in soil enhancers, faith healers and exorcisms, with very mixed results. The only thing that grows on Four-Mile Island is despair. "We can help your marriage," an exorcist once told me, "but we can't help that awful piece of soil."

If Richard Sheffield's idea takes root, the trees will be planted everywhere: the parks of California, golf courses in Colorado, school lawns in New Jersey . . . He envisions an army of firs, maples, dogwoods and pines all across the United States -- one tree for every American veteran who ever served. How many are we talking? "I have no idea," said Sheffield, an Air Force veteran who works as a landscaper and nursery owner. "There must be millions, but we're ready." On Saturday morning, Sheffield's dream began to take shape as members of the nonprofit Veterans for Trees held their first tree-planting ceremony in the Kern County community of Frazier Park.

Hank Brokaw, an avocado and citrus nurseryman who played a crucial role in the development of California's avocado industry, died Wednesday at his home in Santa Paula. He was 82. He had suffered several strokes over the last two years and had been in declining health, said his daughter Elena. Since the early years of the California avocado industry in the 1920s, the most serious problem confronting growers was a fungal disease later identified as Phytophthora cinnamomi , commonly known as avocado root rot. By the 1950s, scientists discovered a few individual seedlings that were tolerant to this disease and thus suited for use as rootstock, the bottom part of the tree on which the fruiting variety, such as Hass or Fuerte, would be grafted.

Near a cluster of purple petunias in a Thousand Oaks greenhouse sprouts a key weapon in the nation's ambitious push into biofuels. The plants don't look like much. They're just tall, spiky shoots of prairie grass. But these stalks are souped-up samples of switch grass, part of an urgent drive toward a new kind of ethanol using plant fibers instead of corn kernels or sugar cane. Ceres Inc.

YOU know that you are a California gardener when the chief attraction of summer is that it is a prelude to autumn. Unlike the East, where leaf fall is followed by frost, here in the West, the third season of the year is a time to plant. It is the all-too-brief interval when the soil is still warm, the atmosphere is becoming moist, and the intense downpours of winter are still a month or two away. Autumn is the time to get many of our best seeds, seedlings, bulbs and saplings into the ground.

The trees chopped down and dragged off the hill at Occidental College last week meant more to 81-year-old Scott Wilson than the nicely framed sunsets or shaded strolls they provided. The 65 oaks and sycamores were among hundreds planted on the Eagle Rock campus 13 years ago as the first effort by North East Trees, which the landscape architect founded to beautify diverse pockets of northeast Los Angeles.

To the uninitiated, the boysenberry may look like a big, blowzy, underripe blackberry, but it is in fact a noble fruit, as distinct from a common blackberry as a thoroughbred is from a mule. Large, dark purple, juicy and intense, it derives its unique flavor from its complex ancestry: sweetness and floral aroma from its raspberry grandmother, and a winy, feral tang from three native blackberry species. It's a California classic, emblematic of the joys of growing up in the Southland before it succumbed completely to sprawl.

LAYTONVILLE, CALIF. - In the mountains of Mendocino County, a middle-aged couple stroll into the cool morning air to plant the year's crop. Andrew grabs a shovel and begins to dig up rich black garden beds while Anna waters the seedlings, beginning a hallowed annual ritual here in marijuana's Emerald Triangle. In the past, planting day was a time of great expectations, maybe for a vacation in Hawaii or Mexico during the rainy months or a new motor home to make deliveries around the country.

Two spiky green pine seedlings, the offspring of one of the oldest trees on Earth, were presented to the U.S. Botanic Garden on Tuesday as part of an effort to study and eventually clone the world's great trees. The 10-month-old seedlings, each about 4 inches high, were delivered to the Botanic Garden by northern Michigan tree farmer David Milarch and his son Jared.

A nonprofit tree cloning organization has failed to create an exact genetic replica of the oldest known tree on Earth -- a bristlecone pine dubbed Methuselah that clings to arid soil in California's White Mountains. But the group managed to coax a crop of seedlings from the ancient tree's cones in what the group's co-founder calls a partial victory. Because the 2-inch sprouts grew from seeds, they also contain genetic material of another parent tree.