There is a quiet confession from me for the Field Guide to Manzanitas: I did not set out to make it because I was an expert. I made it because I wasn’t.
Years ago, while wandering through California’s chaparral and woodlands in pursuit of conifers, I began to notice how little I understood about the understory beneath them. I admired the polished red limbs of manzanitas and could recognize the genus on sight, but naming a plant to species was usually beyond me. The subtleties—leaf, inflorescence, burl structure, glandular hairs, habitat nuance.
So I did what I do when faced with a botanical or ecological mystery: I made a book.
Continue reading “Manzanitas of Fort Ord: Creating the Field Guide I Needed”