A quiet revolution on Catalina

THIS rugged isle rises from the ocean like a dark bony whale, its belly licked by giant kelp and tickled by garibaldis. Dock at Avalon, and soon your eyes are drawn to niche gardens on the tiny resort town’s narrow streets, shocking the senses with fiery geranium and magenta bougainvillea, towering palms and yuccas dating to the 1930s.

But make the slow, bumpy ride toward remote Middle Ranch, and the landscape quickly shifts. Cliffs are clothed in the quieter, more natural beauty of St. Catherine’s lace, one of California’s rarest native plants, flourishing in its natural habitat -- its only natural habitat. The white-blooming buckwheat is a remnant of early California, one of 400 native plants here and one of six endemic species that exist naturally nowhere else on Earth.

Clearly, this is the real Catalina. And if one local group has its way, it always will be.

The nonprofit Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns and manages 88% of the island, is preserving Catalina as nature intended, one plant at a time. With facilities in Avalon and Middle Ranch, the group is doing more than simply revegetating the island’s wild areas with native species. It’s also embarking on a measured campaign to change what Catalina residents plant at home, replacing those geraniums, bougainvilleas and other imports with flowers and shrubs that better fit the island’s fragile ecosystem.

The conservancy’s broad mission is to protect the island and all the life it sustains, balancing conservation and education with human demands for recreation. To witness just how important native flora is to that effort, one need only visit Middle Ranch, an old farming settlement that’s home to the conservancy’s research department and James H. Ackerman Native Plant Nursery.

Most people, residents and visitors alike, never get this far. Locked gates transect roads at both ends of Avalon, limiting vehicle traffic into the interior. Even day hikers need permits to enter. But those who do make arrangements to visit Middle Ranch find tidy Quonset huts and shaded tables that yield 22,500 plants a year.

“Ninety-five percent are grown from seed, the rest from cuttings,” nursery manager Michael Herrera says. Most are earmarked for the restoration of wild lands, but the hope is that many plants will make their way to home gardens someday.

CONSERVANCY botanists Denise and John Knapp share a house in Middle Ranch with their 18-month-old son, Wyatt Jepson, named for California’s most eminent early botanist, Willis Linn Jepson. Denise researches native plant populations on the island, particularly those affected by nonnative species. John, who also tracks local invasive plants, says the list has grown to 76, including fennel, English ivy, Arundo donax, Vinca major, German ivy and bridal creeper -- a South African native that’s also called Asparagus asparagoides or smilax asparagus and is one of New Zealand’s worst weeds.

“The conservancy has mapped all invasive plants on the island from mountain ridge to the interior,” he says. “And the epicenter is Avalon.”

Data shows that those colorful, pretty pocket gardens dotting the cliffs of Avalon pose a threat to the island’s ecology. Nonnative species can muscle out natives and spread at great speed in this small, fragile, isolated environment. Unwelcome seeds and plant parts -- disseminated by wind, water, birds, beasts and beachcombers -- not only alter what the island looks like but what life it’s able to harbor.

Ironically, many attractive plants endemic to the island -- particularly St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum giganteum) and Catalina Island live-forever (Dudleya virens ssp. hassei) -- are quite happy in cultivation and beautiful year-round.

The same can be said of natives with wider distribution, including Catalina currant, Catalina cherry and the red-flowering Island bush snapdragon (Galvezia speciosa). It’s a message that conservancy officials are spreading to island gardeners, and demonstrating through their own homes.

Frank Starkey is assistant director of conservation, and wife Annette Shears is the former director of volunteers, now a special education teacher on the island. Their garden near Middle Ranch consists largely of native plants, most grown from seed they collected themselves.

As a novice, she chose showy plants: tree poppy, sticky monkey flower, heart-leaved penstemon and malva rosa.

“I used to favor green all year, but now I like the diversity,” Shears says. “Now the fun is trying to figure out which Catalina Island plants will grow in our garden.”

A carpet of white-wanded yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) colors their backyard each spring. A fence-high St. Catherine’s lace fills one corner, not far from a bed of well-protected tomatoes.

Out front, Catalina California quail hide in mounds of silver bush lupine (Lupinus albifrons) and peck at seed pods. Tree poppies and bush mallow provide nonstop color, but a prized Island ceanothus (Ceanothus arboreus) is struggling. To deer, its new growth is a delicacy.

Wildlife challenge plants and gardeners alike. Nonnative bison are known to graze, trample, and otherwise befoul Island snapdragon with their bodily functions. Bulls like to rub their heads in sumac, including one specimen below the couple’s bedroom window, waking them in the night.

Not all natives are easy to raise, either. Starkey is itching to grow the endemic Catalina ironwood, but it’s tricky. “Only one out of a hundred seeds will germinate,” he says.

By comparison, succulents in the genus Dudleya are easy to propagate and thrive almost anywhere, “with plump, light gray-green leaves and flowers more beautiful than any orchid,” Shears says.

It’s too early to tell if residents will embrace the campaign for native plants, but Avalon residents Mary Stein and Randy Brannock, owners of a kayak and snorkel business, have answered the call. As part of the city’s Adopt-a-Spot program, the couple are volunteering to plant natives along the Burma Trail, a series of city-owned stone terraces that zigzag up the slope by their home.

A colorful fusion of yarrow, bush sunflower, black sage and blue-eyed grass is well-established on one level of the slope. This fall, Stein and Brannock will set out white sage, Island oak, Catalina mahogany and St. Catherine’s lace, plus more yarrow and bush sunflower.

“There’s a disconnect between the town of Avalon and surrounding hills,” says Stein, who moved from Studio City in 1974. She has been talking up the neighbors, explaining how native plants will look prettier, smell nicer, attract more birds and butterflies and require less maintenance. The neighbors, she says, are curious but not yet convinced.

But it’s true: Once established, Catalina natives need little or no care. Shears waters her transplants every other week through their first summer, then fall and winter rains take over.

FIRES, including five blazes last month, are a natural part of Catalina’s ecology. Scientists are not yet certain how natives and invasives will respond.

“Plants will come back,” says Carlos de la Rosa, the conservancy’s chief conservation and education officer. “The question for scientists is: Do we assist or let nature take its course?” The conservancy will make ground and aerial assessments, study fire intensity and its effect on the seed bank, and examine the impact of large herbivores, particularly deer, on rebounding vegetation.

The bigger questions are whether a philosophical shift will take root with island residents and if the conservancy will be successful in extending Catalina’s wild, natural habitat into Avalon.

Planners see Catalina as a microcosm of the larger environment -- a model where land, plants and animals, including humans, can all prosper. Destructive pigs and goats are gone. Restoration projects are advancing.

And last year, a rare grass was rediscovered on the island after years of presumed extinction. It hadn’t been seen since 1912. Proof their efforts are effective? Not quite, but conservancy staff say it’s inspiring -- just one more reason to keep working.

Lili Singer can be reached at home@latimes.com.

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A plant pilgrimage

Santa Catalina Island is home to 400 species of native plants. Here are some suggestions for visitors who want to experience the island’s botanical bounty.

Getting there

Ferry: Catalina Express docks in Long Beach, San Pedro and Dana Point; (800) 481-3470; www.catalinaexpress.com. Marina Flyer docks in Marina del Rey; (310) 305-7250; www.catalinaferries.com.

Places to see

Wrigley Memorial and Botanical Garden: Native plants, desert plants, species endemic to Catalina, and historic vines and shrubs planted by the island’s onetime owners, the Wrigley family. (310) 510-2897.

Nature Center at Avalon Canyon: Self-guided exhibits. (310) 510-0954.

Information

Conservancy: For details on hiking and biking permits or volunteering in the native plant nursery, call (310) 510-2595, go to www.catalinaconservancy.org or stop at the Conservancy House, 125 Claressa Ave., Avalon.

-- Lili Singer