My zeal for the botanical exploration [of San Miguel Island] had suffered but a slight abatement by remarks vouchsafed on the eve of my departure by some who had been there; one gentleman averring that it was all a naked sand-bank, and another that it bore no trees or bush of any kind....

- Edward L. Greene, botanist, 1887

If you pass along the island after the summer brown has taken over, San Miguel will seem dead, and any enthusiasm you might have for botanical exploration will be quashed. Certainly from a distance, the island will appear desolate, cheerless, and bleak - in a word, lifeless. You might think the Navy had a splendid idea when they chose San Miguel Island as a bombing target.

In reality, a botanical exploration ashore will be a treat any season of the year. Two hundred eighty plant species grow on San Miguel Island. Eighty percent are indigenous. To enjoy the wild flowers at San Miguel, you need not visit in spring. Flowers bloom on the island year-round. Even in the dryness of summer, on close inspection life and color abound.

Before the arrival of sheep ranchers in the mid-nineteenth century, a dense growth of shrubs covered the island. Overgrazing produced a barren soil with many sand dunes. The U. S. Navy inflicted further damage when they used San Miguel Island as a practice bomb target. The removal of grazing animals and the cessation of bombing permitted the beginning of a recovery.

The plants are advancing on the sand dunes. Blowouts, those sterile valleys and depressions created by the wind, are turning green in spring. The distinctive white sand stripes, characteristic of early aerial photographs, are still there; but they are shrinking. Pioneering plants capable of living on sterile soil and enriching it are leading the way. Foremost among them is San Miguel Locoweed, a species found only at the islands. Astragalus miguelensis is a low gray-green bush with bean-like seeds in bladder pods. It converts nitrogen from the air into a soluble compound and leaves it in the soil, a fertilizer for plants that will follow. There's something noble about locoweed, especially when we compare it with ice plant.

In its advance on the dunes, ice plant, Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, has a unique strategy that is one of the reasons you will see so much of it on the island. As it grows, it absorbs airborne salt and concentrates it. Then, when the plant withers, it salts the earth it grows on. Species that cannot tolerate salt cannot survive in the same soil. The ice plant is commonly thought to be an introduced species with origins in South Africa. It was, however, well established when Edward Greene surveyed the flora of San Miguel Island in 1887. Its introduction was probably natural.

If you take a walking tour of San Miguel Island, visiting the caliche forest will give you some idea of the extensive plant life that covered the island before the nineteenth century. Caliche, a calcium carbonate crust, forms in and around the roots of vegetation. When winds erode the soil, they leave the calcified roots exposed - ghostly, vertical white tubes.

In colorful contrast to the caliche forest, a spectacular flower show arrives in spring. A walk up Nidever Canyon will take you through a garden of wild flowers. The most extraordinary of these is the giant coreopsis, a head-high bush of yellow daisy-like flowers. Spectacular displays of coreopsis bloom on north-facing slopes, particularly at Nidever Canyon, Harris Point, and Hoffmann Point.

On an island with so much wind and so few protected areas, botanists tell us we should not expect to see much "arboreal vegetation" - that is, trees. And you won't see trees other than the four palms on the beach at Cuyler Harbor planted by a local yachtsman in the 1960s. Yet wood was commonly used at the island for cooking and heating - in both prehistoric and historic times. It probably came from the lemonadeberry, Rhus integrifolia, a species no longer growing at San Miguel Island in any abundance. Greene reported finding a wind-blown specimen with branches that grew some thirty feet, but never got more than one foot from the ground. Willow trees grow in Willow Canyon; and in at least one other deep sheltered canyon, but they are off the trail and you won't see them.

Although no plants are unique to San Miguel Island, a dozen species grow there that are only found on the Channel Islands.

A Cruising Tip on Kelp

If you are at the helm of a boat, kelp is the most important plant at San Miguel Island. Steering clear of kelp patches, especially in unfamiliar water, is good seamanship.

When you try to traverse a thick patch, kelp is a hazard:

Kelp can foul your propeller. Commercial boats operating here have kelp-cutting blades in front of their propellers. After passing through kelp, you can usually clear your prop by running it in reverse.

Kelp can clog your cooling water intake. Although properly designed strainers prevent this, many strainers don't.

Even a forty-foot auxiliary sailboat can get stuck in a thick patch of kelp. The aboriginal islanders relied on the strength of the kelp and its firm attachment to the bottom when they tied their boats to the plant instead of dropping an anchor.

Kelp is an aid to navigation:

When you see kelp growing, you know that you are in shoal water. Kelp doesn't grow in water more than twenty fathoms deep. Of course, the absence of kelp does not mean you are in deep water.

Kelp grows most often from a rocky bottom. When you see kelp, look elsewhere for sand in which to set your anchor.

Most dangerous submerged rocks in the Channel Islands National Park appear on the NOAA charts, but we have come across one or two that did not. Had we shied away from the kelp, we would not have hit them.

Nautical charts show the approximate location of kelp beds. Whether you find kelp there depends on the recent history of the waters. Kelp forests come and go to an extraordinary degree. Kelp has no roots, but clings to rocks with holdfasts and depends on nutrients dissolved in the water. Powerful storms produce huge swells that rip kelp from the bottom. A major El Nino, such as the one in 1982 and 1983, depletes kelp forests, because the invading warm equatorial water is poor in nutrients and provides a comfortable temperature for certain kelp-eating bacteria.

Kelp will turn a choppy sea into a smooth one. It has no effect, however, on the swell. Anchoring behind a patch of kelp therefore enhances your comfort, but not your safety.