Plant Communities At The SRP: Why is the Socal Flora Interesting
To understand why our flora is so interesting, we also need a bit of history: geologic and floral history. It's a fascinating story, and one which we can see right here at the SRP. Nowhere else in Southern California is this story told so well!
To understand this story, you need to know that a rough evolutionary timescale is one million years. This is roughly the time for Nature to produce a new species (although known examples range from 0.01 to 100 million years).
If conditions change drastically, Nature begins to adapt new species to the new conditions in one million years, and is essentially finished adapting in ten million years.
How do we know this? Nature has conducted at least ten or so experiments that give us the answer. They're called Mass Extinctions.
http://tchester.org/srp/plants/communities/32.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 6 November 2005.