Forest succession after a major disruption like logging or wildfire — of which we’ve seen plenty lately — can be measured in stages. The early-seral stage, dominated by grasses, shrubs, and eventually saplings among both surviving large trees and standing dead and dying trees, typically lasts between one and three decades.
It’s been more than 100 years since the last big fire at one coastal Sonoma County state reserve, but the forest is largely suspended in an early-seral stage. That’s thanks to decades of active land management for the benefit of a single shrub, the rhododendron, which is also the namesake of the reserve. In May and June, visitors to the Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve will find the plant blooming in all its rosy-pink magnificence.
California State Parks senior environmental scientist Brendan O’Neill explains that crews thin the redwood, tan oak, and fir forest by removing smaller trees from beneath the main forest canopy, then piling the cuttings and covering them to cure, before burning the piles in winter when conditions allow. “The rhododendrons depend upon sunlight and openings in the forest to be at their greatest,” O’Neill says.
Three species of native rhododendrons exploded on the landscape after last century’s fateful conflagration. All are fire-adapted, possessing latent buds in their root crowns that initiate vigorous new growth after a fire, even if the rest of the plant is charred beyond repair. In 1933, about a decade after the fire, Edward P. Kruse donated to California part of the large ranch on which his family had been raising sheep and logging tan oak — expressly for the public’s continued enjoyment of the dense rhododendron stands whose fragrant, late-spring blossoms had already become a popular tourist attraction…