California Naturalist Logs Life in the Other Lanes

Allan A. Schoenherr is asked by a photographer to pose, crouching, by a small artificial stream that flows near his office at Fullerton College. The pose brings to his mind a favorite photograph of his “mentor,” naturalist John Muir.

It is a measure of Schoenherr’s affection for Muir that a copy of the picture in question is taped to the ceiling of his car. Muir’s eloquent writings helped create a national awareness of California’s natural wonders and were instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park.

Schoenherr has long shared Muir’s love of the state, and now he has something else in common. He’s a published author.

“A Natural History of California,” a new guidebook to the state, grew out of a class of the same title that Schoenherr has been teaching at Fullerton College for 15 years. The book is being used as a text at several local colleges, but Schoenherr hopes its audience will include more than students.

“It’s not a textbook; it’s for anybody who wants to learn more about California,” Schoenherr said in an interview at Fullerton College. “The major thrust of the book won’t be college students. It’ll be the layman.”

University of California Press, publisher of the book ($38), apparently agrees. The publishers have sent Schoenherr on one book-signing jaunt to Northern California, not typical practice for textbooks, and they’ve made the book available in general-interest bookstores.

“A Natural History of California” is No. 56 in the press’ California Natural History Guides series, but all the previous books have dealt with some specific aspect of the state’s complex and diverse natural story.

“The idea was that there is no single book that covers the whole state,” Schoenherr said. “So this is it.” (The University of California Press continues to publish Elna Bakker’s “An Island Called California,” a much more general introduction to the state’s natural communities.)

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Art Smith, editor of the California Natural History Guides series since it started in 1953, said books in the series used to be limited to 64 pages, but that has changed over the years--Schoenherr’s is 783. “We didn’t really expect to go over 700 pages, I’ll admit to that, but Allan had the material,” Smith said in a phone interview.

After introductory chapters on basic geology and basic ecology, “A Natural History of California” has separate chapters on nine major geographic and climatic zones in the state. Each chapter is further divided into sections on climate, geology, plant communities and animals.

Although heavily illustrated (with 270 black and white and 69 color photographs), “A Natural History of California” is not really a field guide. Rather, it’s a more descriptive approach, with brief histories of many of the state’s more prominent or interesting plants and animals.

The Couch’s spadefoot toad, for instance, is a desert species that spends most of the year in a dormant state, buried underground, with several special adaptations to help it retain water. The sound of thunder breaks the dormancy: it digs its way to the surface and, if conditions are right, they congregate in large numbers at temporary ponds created by the rain.

Eggs are laid and fertilized in the ponds and development begins--among the fastest known among vertebrates, according to the book. A mere 10 days after the eggs are laid, the tadpoles lose their tails and begin to grow legs. They bury themselves to wait another year for the next big rain as soon as the pond begins to dry; the total period from egg to dormancy is usually four to six weeks.

Learning about the life histories of the plants and animals they see, and the geological story behind the landscapes they visit, will give hikers, campers and others an enhanced enjoyment of the outdoors, Schoenherr says.

Schoenherr started his class on the natural history of California as a way to introduce non-science majors to the state’s many natural attractions. He also taught the course for 10 years at UC Irvine, and each summer takes a group of Fullerton College students into the High Sierra for a month of backpacking and ecology study.

The natural history class, heavy on field trips, was a way to “use California as a living laboratory” and “take advantage of the incredible opportunities” in the state, he said.

This is a diverse state by any measure. According to the Sunset Western Garden Book, for instance, there are 24 recognized climatic zones in California, Schoenherr said, while no other state in the contiguous 48 has more than eight, and many Eastern states have just one.

Depending on who’s counting, the state has as many as 300 habitat types or communities. California has the lowest and hottest spot in the country, Death Valley, less than 100 miles from the highest spot in the lower 48, Mt. Whitney. Some places in the northwestern forests of the state get 120 inches of rain a year.

In addition, California has 65 endemic plants and animals (species that occur nowhere else), more than any other state in the contiguous 48 states. In all, there are 540 bird species, 214 mammal, 77 reptile, 47 amphibian and 83 freshwater fish species.

“That’s what we mean by diversity,” Schoenherr said. “Wet, dry, low, high--put that all together and the result is, you’ve got a lot to talk about in California.”

On top of all that, the state also has more roadless territory than any state outside Alaska, Schoenherr said, which means there are lots of opportunities for natural history buffs to observe nature in action. “I go camping all year, mountains in the summer, desert in the winter,” he said.

The author, who sports long hair and prefers blue jeans and flannel shirts, said he looks back fondly on the ‘60s. “There was a real groundswell of interest in nature and the outdoors,” he said, a phenomenon that was reflected in the types of students who were attracted to his classes.

“As time passed, our urban environment closed in around us,” and, consequently, the students he has taught have become more urban, he said.

“Sometimes it’s comical how urban they are. The sun rises in the east? That’s news to them,” Schoenherr said. “That’s the thing about being urban--you lose touch with the environment . . . . You’ve lost something as a human, as an organism.”

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Schoenherr grew up in Corona and lives in Laguna Beach. He started teaching biology and ecology classes at Fullerton College in 1961, after graduating with a master’s in biology from USC (he later received a Ph.D. in zoology from Arizona State).

Although he is considered an expert on pupfish (a small fish found in desert springs, some species of which are endangered), Schoenherr said his background in both plant and animal ecology is fairly broad in this era of specialization: “I guess you’d call me an old-time naturalist.”

Although he has written numerous articles, he has just two books to his credit, one on reptiles and amphibians of the San Gabriel Mountains and another (as editor) on endangered plant communities of Southern California. The lack of book credits apparently did not dissuade the prestigious University of California Press, however.

When he wrote to propose the book, he said, “They wrote back right away and said, ‘Yes, let’s go for it.’ ”

He has been writing the book for six years, typing the first draft and having assistants enter it into a word processor for him. The first time he saw the book on the shelves of a bookstore, Schoenherr said, “it kind of made me feel neat.” A paperback copy is due to be published in two years.