Southern California ethnobotany: traditional use of native plants

Chemehuevi of the southern Paiute

The Chemehuevi are a nomadic Native American group that lived along the eastern Mojave Desert region and in the Great Basin. This region included area near Death Valley and Las Vegas. They are the most southern branch of the Paiute people.

Tongva

Tongva people once occupied Los Angeles Basin as well as the Southern Channel Islands, including Catalina Island, San Clemente Santa Barbara and San Nicolas Islands. As a strong, hunter-gatherer community, the Tongva were among the most populous of the southern California native groups.

Chumash

The area around Santa Barbara, including the Northern Channel Islands, was occupied by the Chumash people. This includes coastal regions of Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. The Chumash were a sea faring people. They pushed off the Santa Barbara shore to colonize the Northern Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel. Anacapa Island was also visited, however, due to lack of a water supply, the Chumash never built permanent settlements on Anacapa.

Quechan

These Yuman speaking people descended from Native American peoples living in southeastern California and southern Arizona. The Quechan were skilled warriors and actively resisted Spanish colonization.

Luiseño

The Luiseño people (Payómkawichum) lived in modern day Orange County and Camp Pendleton. These ‘People of the West’ foraged along the coast in the area of southern LA and northern San Diego.

Seri

The Seri people (Comcaac) lived in the Mexican region of Sonoran Desert. This includes land near the Gulf of California. They were a semi-nomadic group with strong ties to the desert and the coast.

Tohono O’odham

Previously known as the Papago, the Tohono O’odham are a distinct tribe of Native Americans who mostly settled in the northwestern area of Mexico and the eastern part of Arizona. These people foraged for many desert plants, including the white tepary bean.

Akimel O’odham

The Akimel O’odham, previously known as Pima, lived in central and southern Arizona. They lived in an area that kept them close to the Tohono O’odham people. Akimel O’odham territory encompasses the Gila River.

Coastal Scrub

As you might imagine, Native Americans in southern California took full advantage of their beautiful coastline. The Kumeyaay, Chumash, Tongva and Luiseno people all had settlements along the Pacific Ocean. The coast stays cool in the summer and offers close proximity to fishing and shellfish. In the summertime, this coast habitat was a nice change from the hot, dry interior region.

The plant community associated with this near-shore habitat is called coastal scrub. Coastal scrub plants tend to be soft-leaved and deciduous. The dominant plants here are the sage species and the sagebrush. Today, much of this biome has been greatly reduced due to urbanization and development. However, you can still see intact coastal scrub out at Point Cabrillo Monument in San Diego, CA.

Common coastal scrub plants include: coastal agave (Agave shawii), sage species (Salvia sp.), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), laurel sumac (Malosma laurina), toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) and California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum).

Chaparral

The chaparral is the shrubland biome between the coast and coast mountain range. This plant community is unique to southern California and Baja, Mexico.

The plants living here must be drought tolerant to deal with the hot, dry summers. The leaves of these plants tend to have a hard, waxy exterior to minimize evaporation.

Wildfires are common in the chaparral region, forcing these plants to adapt to this disturbance. Most chaparral plants can bounce back quickly after a fire.

The name ‘chaparral’ is derived from the Spanish word for scrub oak, ‘chaparro.’

Common chaparral plants include: mesquite (Prosopis sp.), chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), Our Lord’s Candle (Yucca whippleii), manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.), oak (Quercus agrifolia), riparian cottonwood (Populus fremonti), willow (Salix spp.) and elderberry (Sambucus nigra).

Pine/Oak/Juniper woodlands

This plant community is found along the eastern slopes of the coastal mountain range, between 2,000 and 5,000 feet in elevation. Here, native tribes occupied forests filled with bushy, evergreen trees. The climate is defined as a hot arid steppe, however there is snow accumulation in the winter. If you drive from Julian towards Anza Borrego State Park, you’ll pass through a great example of this woodland biome.

In southern California, the Pine/Juniper woodlands have been decimated by wildfires. The Cedar Creek fires of 2003 were the most destructive. 270,000 acres of land was charred. These woodland fires encourage the encroachment of chaparral plant community. After the fires, plants in the chaparral biome tend to move in more aggressively than the slower growing evergreens.

Common plants include: California juniper (Juniperus californica), Pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla), Yucca (Yucca sp.), California oak (Quercus sp.) and manzanita (Arctostaphylos).

Sonoran Desert

A portion of the Kumeyaay and Cahuilla population spent much of their time in a true desert, the Sonoran Desert. These people adapted to the extreme temperatures and lived comfortably among the cholla cactus and bighorn sheep. A rain shadow east of the coast range creates the Colorado Desert, this is the western section of the broader Sonoran Desert. Anza Borrego State Park, the Salton Sea area and most of Imperial County are all included in the southern California Sonoran Desert.

The climate here is unique. The daytime high temperatures are very hot and the nights almost never drop low enough to generate frost. There are two rainy seasons. However, these days annual rainfall in this region is highly variable. Furthermore, it should be noted that historians speculate that rain in this desert was more common during the time-frame when Native Americans dominated this region. If this is true, it would have certainly made foraging for plants much easier.

Common plants in the Sonoran Desert include: creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens), California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) and cholla (Opuntia).

Mojave Desert

The Mojave Desert is the smallest and driest of the North American deserts. This biome sits in the southeastern corner of California, overlapping with southern Nevada and southwestern Utah. Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park both lay within the Mojave Desert.

The iconic Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) grows only in the Mojave. This is the tree famously featured on the legendary U2 album. The band drove out to Joshua Tree National Park for the album’s photo shoot.

In fact, the boundary of the Mojave Desert overlaps almost perfectly with the geographic range of the Joshua Tree. For this reason, Joshua Tree is considered an indicator species for the Mojave.

Geologically, the Mojave is mineral rich. The sparsely vegetated basin and range topography spill into flat, alluvial plain valleys. Much of the bedrock and deposit material is borax, potassium and other salts. This composition has led to an active mining industry in the region.

Apparently, a large lake once sat adjacent to the Mojave Desert. The Cahuilla people speak of Lake Cahuilla, a historic lake, that once filled Coachella Valley. This lake was fed by the Colorado River and helped make the area hospitable to settlement. At some point prior to the 1700s, the Colorado River changed course and Lake Cahuilla dried up.

Common plants in the Mojave Desert include: Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), Prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) and Cholla (Cylindropuntia sp.)

Speaking of the Mojave Desert, in the summer of 2018 I took a wonderful trip out to the Mojave National Preserve. I just wrote up this travel post about my weekend out in the preserve.