“Firescaping Your Home: A Manual For Readiness In Wildfire Country”

“Fire must be recognized as an integral part of our landscapes,” write biologists Andrienne Edwards and Rachel Schleiger in a stunningly beautiful and indispensible guide to staying safe. What that means, they write, is moving away from old fire suppression ideas and moving toward living with fire even as changing climate and more flammable invasive species (looking at you, Scotch broom!) make it trickier to live in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

Edwards is a Chico State botanist; Schleiger, a plant ecologist whose Magalia house survived the Camp Fire, teaches at both Chico State and Butte College. Their book, “Firescaping Your Home: A Manual For Readiness In Wildfire Country” ($29.99 in paperback from Timber Press; also for Amazon Kindle) gives readers clear guidance about hardening one’s home, creating defensible space, and planting fire-safe gardens.

In full-color pages the authors offer a catalog of hundreds of native plant species that might slow a fire, in part by catching embers. They also discuss how fire behaves and how to think in terms of fire-suppression zones. 

Five feet around the house should be a “noncombustible zone” (no organic mulch or wood chips); next come the “green zone,” the “fuel reduction zone” and, finally, beyond 100 or 300 feet, the “habitat zone.” Details on how to maintain each zone guide even a WUI novice and come not only from the authors’ expertise but from lived experience (before Edwards replaced her old roof tiles a baby possum fell through a hole—an open door for embers).

“A powerful key to protecting your home in wildfire-prone areas,” the authors write, “is to learn how vegetation and structures affect wind patterns” and to consider using a “fire shelterbelt,” windbreaks of “fire-resistent (hydrated) trees and shrubs” that can “reduce wind, flying embers, and firebrands.”

Bottom line: “We must recognize that protecting homes and families is not about controlling wildfire but rather reducing the flammability of our homes, landscapes, and communities.” The use of prescribed burns, and even letting some wildfires burn where the threat is small, draw on the wisdom of Native peoples. “Fire is something we can coexist and evolve with, moving into the future.”

"The Wildflowers Of Bidwell Park"

Renowned science educators Roger Lederer and artist-wife Carol Burr have the dirt on Bidwell Park. Or, more to the point, what grows out of that dirt. Their new collaboration is called "The Wildflowers Of Bidwell Park" ($24.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing, available locally from Magna Carta, Mangrove Gift and Garden, ABC Books, the Bookstore downtown, Bird in Hand, and Made in Chico).

Earlier volumes include "The Birds Of Bidwell Park" and "The Trees Of Bidwell Park," but this project was a long time in coming. After consulting with local botanists, Lederer and Burr narrowed the list of some 800 flowering plants in the park down to 112 to illustrate, though more than twice that number are given a nod or a description.

Defining "wildflowers" as "typically short, showy, herbaceous and mainly annual plants" (including those accidentally or intentionally introduced), the book presents on each page a colorful illustration, name, origin, size, where in the park the plant can be found, and some interesting observations and history. Organized by color, this is not a comprehensive field guide but rather a revel in the beautiful and bodacious flowering park.

It's clear that picking the flowers is prohibited by California law, so the health benefits often described (along with the sometimes poisonous effects) are not intended as a dinner menu. In fact, at least with one common weed in the park, "Handle the plant and you will never forget Milk Thistle." Though, the book ads, "its seeds have been used as a coffee substitute and are sold in health food stores" and the plant is the emblem of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Now the Perennial Sweet Pea: There are "4 species of pea in the park," often seen near Big Chico Creek. The Common Soap Plant "was used by indigenous Americans after being pounded and mixed with water, its soapy mixture used as a stupefying agent and placed into streams to stun and catch fish...." The seeds of the Shepherd's Purse "when placed in water, supposedly act as a sort of fly-paper for mosquitoes, reputedly attracting and trapping them."

The book will attract readers to marvel afresh at even the tiniest inhabitants of Bidwell Park.