I recently received the following email from Sandy Greenstein, who gardens in the Linda Vista area of Pasadena: “My brown heavy plastic drip lines routinely get coyote chew breaks. We have at least one regular coyote visitor, and we think it sometimes sleeps in tall thyme on our hill. The coyote used to eat figs from our tree, but it was knocked down with another tree during the winds that came with the January 6-7 fires. Can you suggest something that will prevent our coyote visitor from damaging our drip lines?”
Before we address your problem, I think it would be instructive to understand why there has been an explosion of wildlife in the greater Los Angeles area. It seems that I am visited by a raccoon, a skunk, or an opossum every night. They strip the pluots, peaches, and apricots from my trees. On the plus side, they dig up and devour all the fig beetle larvae that hatch in the mulch around the trees.
One of the explanations for this phenomenon is useful in understanding the presence of coyotes in Linda Vista, which, while not a wilderness area per se, is adjacent to the San Rafael Hills and Arroyo Seco canyon system. As urban areas expand, natural animal habitats are broken up, and wildlife find new homes in human habitats. Furthermore, widespread availability of food, shelter, and water (whether in swimming pools, fountains, or drip tubing) in residential areas is a magnet to our fellow mammalian creatures.
While not particularly attracted to thyme or any other plant with a strong scent, coyotes have been known to rest or sleep in thyme because of the protection — certain varieties grow more than a foot tall — and comfort it affords. It is also worth noting that the wildlife in our area consists mostly of small to medium-sized animals, while it is less inviting to larger natural predators such as wolves that would keep the smaller animals under control in more remote locales. Ironically, when efforts to remove coyotes are successful, this can actually lead to an increase in the coyote population as the remaining animals have larger litters — through a phenomenon known as “compensatory reproduction” — to make up for the deficit in their numbers.
It is not only the pull exerted by urban settings that increases the presence of wildlife among us, but the increasing occurrence of droughts and wildfires that push wildlife into our midst. Loss of habitat and subsequent reduction in food sources make our environs all the more irresistible to the wildlife critters that are refugees from drought and fire. Finally, legal protection for certain wildlife species and an increasingly tolerant attitude towards their presence have led to a vast increase in their numbers.
As for preventing coyotes from chewing on your drip irrigation tubing, Susan Savolainen, who gardens in Banning, once suggested to me that I wrap it in hardware cloth (thick woven metal fabric. “Yes, it’s expensive,” she admitted, “but so is replacing dead plants and repairing drip line.”
And then there are these practices, suggested by Jonathan Zimmerman, who wrote to me as follows: “I managed a 600-tree, drip-irrigated orange orchard in Moorpark and spent many mornings repairing chewed irrigation lines. I thought perhaps the critters were thirsty and chewing the lines for water, so I put an emitter that dripped into a pie tin at the end of each line and it worked, mostly. The big chew problem was solved, but I still had occasional pinprick leaks caused by what looked like tiny little teeth. I thought perhaps the young critters were chewing on the lines for fun, so I chopped some old plastic irrigation lines into 4″ sections and scattered them throughout the orchard. Problem solved. No more leaks and lots of presumably happy coyote pups.”
Less than five miles from the Linda Vista coyotes, you will find Altadena, one of the communities most severely impacted by last January’s wildfires, where thousands of homes burned. If you are a local plant person, at the mention of Altadena, you will immediately think of two groups of plants: azaleas and camellias. The reason for this is Nuccio’s Nursery. Located in Altadena, it has been a profligate purveyor of these floriferous plants for many decades. Yet despite the fires that decimated some nursery buildings and incinerated 100,000 cuttings, “This year turned out to be highly successful,” Jim Nuccio informed me during a recent chat.
I had called Nuccio’s after being informed in an email by gardener David Gooler of his recent acquisition of a fragrant Minato-no-Akebono camellia at the nursery. I had never heard of fragrant camellias before.
As Gooler informed me, someone in New Zealand by the name of J. Finley had created dozens of fragrant camellias by hybridizing Camellia lutchuensis — a hardy, fragrant camellia species from Japan — with other Camellia species. Gooler already has two High Fragrance camellias whose powerful fragrance he compares to that of a hybrid tea rose. Gooler postulates that “in 50 to 100 years I would think the majority of camellias will have some scent.” Makes sense to me.
I learned from Jim Nuccio that the nursery carries four fragrant camellia varieties: High Fragrance, Spring Mist, and two with Japanese names. Jim Nuccio extolled High Fragrance as the variety with the strongest fragrance. He also praises it has having the largest flowers and most petals of the scented types. You will want to visit Nuccio’s soon if you wish to procure this and other plants from Jim’s vanishing stock, since the nursery is closing in December of this year. The nursery is located at 3555 Chaney Trail in Altadena and is open Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Please note that the nursery does not accept payment via credit card, but by cash or check only.
California native of the Week: Pretty face or golden stars (Triteleia ixioides) show off perfectly symmetrical, star-shaped, six-tepaled flowers. Each yellow tepal (equivalent to a petal) has a brown streak down the middle. This is a herbaceous perennial that grows from a corm, an underground, gumdrop-shaped, starchy structure that imparts drought tolerance. Leaves wither fast after flowers form on 18-inch stalks in spring or summer, and, at that point, watering should cease or the corms will rot. Corms are edible and taste like potatoes when cooked. At plant-world-seeds.com, you can procure 20 pretty face seeds for $3.92.
If you have a story of wildlife interacting with your garden that you would like to share, please send it to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments, as well as gardening conundrums and successes, are always welcome.