Talk:Chaparral

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moved comment from article

Typical animal life includes --need examples here

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The California tree Quercus agrifolia is most commonly called the coast live oak, not the California live oak. The article itself should probably be moved. Is there any reason to rename it "California" here? Willmcw 23:42, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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No offense intended to the photographer of a lovely scene, but the photo captioned as Coastal sage scrub, Los Angeles County is a poor example of coastal sage scrub. The dominant plants visible are black mustard (the yellow flowers) and eucalyptus trees. One is a native of Europe, and the other of Australia: neither is a member of the coastal sage scrub community. The indistinct shrubs in the middle ground probably are though, as are the identifiable Mexican (blue) elderberries (Sambuca Mexicana) in the near background (htough elderberry is not a core of the scrub community). While I appreciate the much-needed additions to the wikipedia, I think that this photograph has been mislabeled and is misleading. -Willmcw 10:14, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 New Reference to Chaparral? 2 unbalanced article 3 Merge 4 Don't Merge

[edit] New Reference to Chaparral?

Where does "the use of Chaparral in folk spiritual practice" get written about? What about Chaparral as an herbal medicine? Is that here on this page? And lastly, why is the Army missile first on the page - are all, less common references listed before a lengthy, primary reference?

"Chaparral" encompasses a large variety of plants. Probably the best approach would be to add material about the use of specific plants to the articles on those plants. There are probably one or more herbal medicine articles as well, which might be best for non-specific discussions. Also, the articles on the specific "folk", i.e. Native American tribes, that have the practices. Probably all that needs to be added to this article is a mention that various indiegenous peoples made extensive use of chaparral plants for food, medicine, and materials. The missile is two sentences. Usually that stuff goes after, I'm not sure why it's at the top of this page - maybe it's time to put them on a disambiguation page. Cheers, -Willmcw 17:05, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldnt we merge this with California chaparral and woodlands?

I think we should. Though "chaparral" is also a biota found elsewhere, its principal association I with California, and at least the California info should be moved over. Care to be bold and do the merge? Cheers, -Willmcw 06:07, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, upon closer examination, it seems they are not exactly the same. the Cali chaparral and woodlands is apparently a terrestrial ecoregion defined by the WWF, one which encompasses the chaparral as well as some of the coniferous forests in california. it seems that these articles should go together because there is some overlap, but it should be noted that Chaparral is a distinct subset of the CCAW. it seems it deserves its own article tho... so i dunno. Bonus Onus 01:21, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that research. Even so, the CCAW article could be made into a semi-stub that pushes all of the chaparral-specific info over to this article. Lumping chaparral and woodlands together is not the best way of treating either topic, except for the narrow issue of the WWF's regions. -Willmcw

Bottom line is that, IMO, most of the chaparral info from the CCAW should be moved over here, but both articles should be retained. -Willmcw 23:04, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

There was nothing to merge. Both articles cover their specific topic propoerly. False alarm. Apologies. -Willmcw 23:10, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] unbalanced article

This article spends about the first 20% talking about the chaparral biome and the rest promoting a position on a controversy. The author may very well be correct regarding the controversy; that isn't the issue. It's just that the chaparral biome is far more than the fire regime, and the article needs to be rebalanced to respect that. Unfortunately, I'm not the one to write it. Paleolith 03:30, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. There's nothing wrong with the fire material but there is a lack of other information to round it out. I've added a couple of headers to delineate the article. It'd be nice to see more about the plants and animals. -Will Beback 07:13, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Boy, if that ain't the truth. I'll spend some time adding references and shape this into a more balanced contribution. Rick 22:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

A solution may be to break out the info on the fire regime into its own article, and keep just a summary in the Chaparral article. ^BlankVerse 10:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I suggested a merge because Chaparral is the term that refers pretty exclusively to the shrublands of California, something which is covered in "California chaparral and woodlands". Having two seperate articles is redundant. Valley2city 04:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

There is an article about the Pinaceae and one about Gymnosperms, and they're not merged just because Pinaceae are exclusively members of the gymnosperms. The articles are not redundant. This was discussed before and decided against because the terms are not the same and are not used the same. KP Botany 18:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. -Will Beback 17:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. -NoahElhardt 21:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

no chaparral is a term used to define a place with low scrub plants and with a climate rangeing for almost freezing to very hot , near the ocean. there are many of these climate through out the world, one of the larger ones (larger then californias) is the land surrounding the the medditearanion -- unsigned comment by 71.121.173.201 11:36, 2006 November 12

There are different terms for the scrub vegetation of other mediterranean scrub vegetations, and chaparral should technically only be used for the California Floristic Province vegetation, while matorral/maquis/macchia for other Mediterranean ones, fynbos for South Africa and kwongan for Southwest Australia, according to the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and shrub article, which needs some serious work in a few places. KP Botany

Aren't we all forgetting here about the mediterranean chaparral? just for reference "chaparro" is a portuguese word for cork oak and chaparral thus a cork oak grove. since cork oaks are very slow growth trees and cork is harvested only once every nine years, a whole ecosystem develops under the trees, with shrub and wild game (boars) taking advantage of the lowered presence of humans. Galf —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.95.181.54 (talk) 10:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC).

See the article Maquis shrubland for the Mediterranean chapparal, if that is what you mean. KP Botany 18:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't Merge

I am studying enviromental science on a collegiate level and chaparral is considered a unique biome seperate from CA woodlands and does appear around the world. I stumbled on this article while doing a class project. The article should discuss other chaparral regions in more detail however. I find that wikipedians can be to merge happy and this only slows down the research process. --Ian 19:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry too much, in this instance, as the merger request was simply a mistake. I will remove the tags. Thanks for paying attention. Yes, Wikipedians can be merge happy, or so it appears, but in other areas, they are stub happy, creating single sentence articles about everything. It takes time. KP Botany 20:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)