Chuck asked the quite reasonable question
Are these hills green at other times of the year?
and Andrew gave some of the answer
> That IS green! Well there's a bare hint of green which is more than
> we've got.
> Remember, summer is the dead zone. Native grasses die off. Growing
> season is spring and autumn. Australia is worse.
The short answer is yes, and, it depends.
The longer answer is
Those slopes are north facing, into the mid-day sun. Most of the rain comes
from the south, and there is a rain-shadow effect from the hills.
The soils are loess - wind-blown dust from glaciers thousands of years ago,
with no clay colloids, so they do not retain moisture well, and in any case
the slope implies fast drainage. The soils are often shallow which is worser !!
The dominant grasses are native tussocks of the genus Chionochloa which
are pretty tough especially resistant to dessication in all seasons. Apart for
the youngest leaves for a brief while, their narrow wiry leaves are silver or
brown or red. Also, the green component of the pasture apart from weed
such as dandelion, and other herbs, comprises clovers, and introduced
grasses such as browntop and cocksfoot.
In normal pasture management, grazing would prevent the development of
flower heads. In this case, the City Council took over this land (a large
tract,
for a city park) in exchange for the area lower in the photos some of which is
now approved for (expensive) residential subdivision. They lease the grazing
to a farmer whose home farm is 50 miles away. It has been a wet year, and
nobody has enough livestock to graze the grasses hard, so they have
developed the normal brown seedheads. A myriad of them. A dense sward
of flowering/seeding browntop is like a covering of the finest velvet, coloured
purple-brown. Absolutely delightful to see.
A couple of browntop seedheads can be seen at
http://www.tope.nl/tope_show_entry.php?event=21&pic=18
Maybe I should have adjusted the colour of those hills to be more silver - but
the photos were nearly all into the light, so I'm not sure. That's what the
camera recorded, mostly.
Brian
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