<p>In South Africa's western cape, the shrubby Fynbos biome and the abutting Afrotemperate Forest biome share an underlying geology and are subject to the same climatic patterns, yet exist as alternative stable states. In a new study in <em>PNAS, </em>SFI Omidyar Fellow Mingzhen Lu and colleagues dive deep to understand the role of root systems in maintaining these two biomes. </p>
Ventura Botanical Gardens are back after a devastating fire - The San Diego Union-Tribune sandiegouniontribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sandiegouniontribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It took nearly a decade of public meetings, fundraising and planning for the Ventura Botanical Gardens to finally start digging in 2015. Volunteers and the skeleton staff put 2,000 plants in the ground before the Thomas fire came in late 2017 and scorched all that work.
“The fire burned
everything,” said board member and past president Barbara Brown, sweeping her arm to take in the entire garden. “I stood in a friend’s yard and watched it burn.”
As devastating as that was, some plants that seemed burned beyond resurrection still managed to pull through, showing new growth about 60 days later, said Joseph Cahill, the gardens’ executive director. The rare, endangered Chilean wine palms, for instance, have continued to grow even though the bottom half of their trunks are thoroughly charred.