Manzanita's Role in Forest Succession in California, Examples and Observations

A geek fest on how manzanita is often a colonizer plant in ecological succession and the foresting of open areas. How it nurses trees along in spite of it's best efforts to compete, and the adaptations it has developed to survive as long as possible under extremely competitive conditions. This is just my view of my particular part of Northern California and one species of Manzanita out of many, but the basic phenomenon of succession is common among other species in other landscapes.
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[@markbrock9020]

Pretty cool observations there. In the southern CA desert I saw one that had a dead crown, then a new wave of dead wood on the perimeter, then a live wave at the edges of that. It just looked like it was slowly flowing down the hill.

[@GFD472]

What an interesting role the manzanita has in it environment.

[@SomeDudeOnline]

very informational thank you. You mentioned that it's good for firewood which is common but my obsession is with the grain of the wood itself. If you find big enough pieces (saw a few in the video), you can get beautiful wood out of it. Even if you don't plank it out you can use it for furniture. I've made a nightstand using an inverted tripod as the base and am working on a couple more.

[@SkillCult]

Yes, beautiful stuff. I've made handles and other stuff from of it. some species make amazing burl wood too.

[@jd0614]

beautiful

[@Slightquills]

Have you ever taken advantage of the natural manzanita cage to plant additional native trees, or to plant fruiting trees of some kind?

[@SkillCult]

+Slightquills Not specifically. I have less of it on my actual property, so it's not common just where I'd want to do that. I have done similar with fallen dead trees. I tried using that sort of thing to establish new buckeye seedlings, though it hasn't worked out as well as hoped. You can see it a lot though in nature where trees fall even just next to a big trunk and not even in the brush is sometimes all the advantage they need. i think with a lot of forethought to species selection you might be able to really take advantage of reproducing the phenomenon though. The Manzanita really drops a lot of organic matter once it gets established and can form a good mulch that would be hard to create or maintain artificially over years. Also, once you were done with the manzanita it is pretty easy to kill by just cutting it down. Most species I've seen don't seem to stump sprout readily, though I have seen burl forming species that do. neat idea and I think worth some thought. Thanks for commenting

[@SimeonKelly]

lots of forest fire material there.