Iceplants (Carpobrotus edulis) are also called “sea fig” or “hottentot fig” and the second plant I’m learning about, and featuring for the Earth-Friendly Chroniclers’ Challenge #9.
The focus for challenge #9 is biodiversity and invasive plant species…and what Jane, the host of the Earth-Friendly Chroniclers’ call the plant “bullies”.
As with the yellow starthistle (my 1st post for this challenge) which grew all over Contra Costa County, the iceplant is another plant I mistakenly thought as native to this part of the central coast of California.
Photo taken just a few weeks ago at Fort Ord Dunes National Monument area. Don’t let the pretty pink flowers fool you, these plants are very aggressive, and crowds out native sand dune plants.
Why did I think it was native? Well, because these plants are plentiful all along the coast, especially around the Fort Ord Dunes area (photo above).
Articles about the beautiful coastal Monterey County town of Pacific Grove feature images of iceplants in full bloom —- including on the official city website. The Perkins Park area of Pacific Grove is noted for its “magic carpet” of iceplants.
Main page of the Pacific Grove official website. The mass of pink flowers are all iceplants.
Among the first scenic coastal photos we took when we moved here, featured ice plants in the background.
The photo below is my grandson, Jun-Jun, at a popular beach side / highway stop near Seaside, California. He is surrounded by…you guessed it, ICEPLANTS.
And at a paved road area at the Fort Ord Dunes (part of the Monterey Bay Coastal Bike Path) here is Jun riding his bike with his grandfather, where you can see iceplants growing on both sides of the road. To the left of the photo is traffic from California State Highway 1.
The photo below of my younger grandson, Gabriel, zooming away (actually, slowly foot pedaling away) on his toy cycle shows more of the red-hued leaves of the iceplant in the background, facing the Pacific Ocean. Yes, way more iceplants.
Iceplants are found on many beaches here in the Monterey Bay. The greenery you see on the sand dunes below at Fort Ord Dunes are indeed…more ice plants!
Iceplants are so common in this area that it is easy to assume that they have always been here.
Non-native plants have been brought to California since the first contact with Europeans. A little about the big problem of the loss of grasslands, and native coastal plants from ElkhornSlough.org:
Approximately 99% of California native grasslands have been lost over the last 200 years, making them one of the most critically endangered ecosystems in the U.S.
Loss of coastal scrub in some parts of California has also been severe. Within the Elkhorn Slough watershed, coastal scrub assemblages often face threats from infestation by tall exotic weeds, such as poison hemlock, fennel, and jubata grass.
Because most of California has a mild Mediterranean climate, it is easy to see how plants from other parts of the world, especially with similar weather, can naturalize here.
Iceplants growing across the Moss Landing State Beach area, farm fields across the river water.
Typically, these plant invaders have no natural enemies, or wildlife that eat the plants, so it is easy for them to become plant bullies.
Photos above of iceplants spilling past fence areas at the Moss Landing State Beach pathway.
Apparently, iceplants are really good at crowding out native plants…the photo below is a good example:
The plant in the middle of the photo is a beach Sagewort (Artemisia pycnocephala), which is the most common California native plant found around sand dunes. You can see that this one is being encircled by the aggressive iceplant, which will eventually choke out the sagewort. Iceplants are very good at spreading!
While iceplants in their native South Africa are great for the wildlife there (where turtles, snakes, antelopes, lizards and other animals eat the plant’s leaves, flowers and seeds) it does not provide food or shelter to native California coastal wildlife.
Photo of iceplant covering landscape on the French Mediterranean island, Bagaud island, in the Port-Cros National Park. Photo by Vincent via Wikipedia and public domain
In parts of the Mediterranean coast where the iceplant naturalized, the plant also helps other invasive species to thrive. I found this part about invasive mutualism of interest from a Wikipedia article:
On the Mediterranean coast, Carpobrotus has spread out rapidly and now parts of the coastline are completely covered by this invasive species. Moreover, another invasive species, the black rat, has been shown to enhance the spreading of the ice plant through its feces. As the ice plant represents a food resource for the rat, both benefit from each other (invasive mutualism).
Invasive Plants in the Western United States
Here is more about invasive plants from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in California:
Estimates indicate that invasive plants are spreading at about 4,600 acres per day on federal lands alone in the Western United States.
Weeds have invaded approximately 17 million acres of public rangelands in the West – more than quadrupling their range from 1985-1995. In northern California, yellow starthistle increased from 1 million acres in 1981 to 10 million acres today.
While the yellow starthistle were introduced by accident, the iceplants were planted in this area on purpose.
Ice plants at Moss Landing Harbor (in the water are two Southern Sea Otters) Click on the photo if you would like to see more photos and learn about sea otters that live in the Monterey Bay area.
Concerns about soil erosion, and the belief decades ago that iceplants would help to stabilize soil and sand dune areas led to mass plantings, especially in military bases, like at Fort Ord.
In the 1970s, drought issues and the need to use drought tolerant vegetation along California highways led CalTrans — the California Department of Transportation, who manage over 50,000 miles (80,467 km) of the state’s highways and freeways — to plant iceplants on some freeway embankments and dividers.
Except…the folks who promoted the use of iceplants to stabilize soil did not have the information we now have, or the awareness about biodiversity issues, and the extent (and ability) of these plants to crowd out native plants.
On the use of iceplants as a soil stabilizer, from a Wikipedia article:
Despite its use as a soil stabilizer, it actually exacerbates and speeds up coastal erosion. It holds great masses of water in its leaves, and its roots are very shallow. In the rainy season, the added weight on unstable sandstone slopes and dunes increases the chances of slope collapse and landslides.
Oh no! So now what?
A lot of work will need to be done to remove iceplant infestations, and to re-plant native plants and restore dune habitat areas with California coastal plants.
The photo below from Moss Landing State Beach, where dune restoration projects are in place, gives an idea of what the sand dunes around these parts are supposed to look like…
Removing iceplants will give native plants a chance to recover, like the yellow sand verbenas (Abronia-latifolia)…
and the Monterey spineflower (Chorizanthe pungens).
So that eventually, the dunes here will look more like the photos below, instead of iceplant intensive, like what we are used to seeing…
Coastal cities and public agencies, as well as non-profit organizations are putting forth dune restoration projects, working sections at a time to remove highly invasive species like iceplants.
There are still many iceplant patches in this area that need to be removed, but native plants are returning to dunes at the Moss Landing State Beach area.
This will take funding, a lot of work, a lot of volunteers, and educating the public about the “return of the natives”.
Because ice plants are succulents and have a high water content, burning is not a recommended way to eradicate these plant bullies. They will have to be removed by pulling the plant out (thankfully, it has shallow roots), flipping them over and piling them up to compost in areas where it makes sense to compost them. I’ve also read about cities and agencies allowing the use of a specific type of herbicide to kill the plants, under expert supervision (see the Pacific Grove city website and type in “ice plant” in the search box for more details).
I hope by posting this information and photos, you learned more about this invasive plant (as I have), and it is another step towards helping to control the spread of this plant bully in the Monterey Bay area.
To join in the Earth-Friendly Chroniclers’ Invasive Plant Challenge, click here, and be sure to visit blog posts for this event, including from South Africa / Cape Peninsula – by Nature on the Edge, from Australia – An Evolving Scientist and in Oregon, by challenge host Just Another Nature Enthusiast.
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ABOUT FORT ORD – DESIGNATED A NATIONAL MONUMENT IN 2012
If you visit the Monterey Bay area and want to go to a super clean beach without many visitors, check out the Fort Ord Dunes State Park.
In April, 2012, a large part of the Fort Ord area became a National Monument, and is federally protected from further development — a good thing for the Monterey Bay!
Before becoming a U.S. National Monument, Fort Ord land was used by the U.S. Military as a training area. Starting in 1917 and up to the 1990’s, almost 1,500,000 troops trained at Fort Ord. In addition to its role as a major training base for the army, it was also a staging and deployment area for army troops that fought in World War II as well as the Vietnam war.
The base officially closed in 1994, and many of the military structures (mostly barracks) have been demolished, and the land now houses facilities used by California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and other tracts of land are being developed for housing and commercial uses.
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More information:
Return of the Natives – A California State Universtiy Monterey Bay (CSUMB) community and school-based environmental education program to restore native habitat – On why they are doing this work:
The Monterey area’s natural landscape and ecosystems are under siege from an army of invasive “exotic” plant species or WEEDS.
Most have been introduced for horticultural purposes, or came as agricultural stowaways, from areas of the world that have similar climates to central California. Spreading onto disturbed soils such as road cuts, and lacking natural enemies, these non-native invaders quickly replace native plants and overrun fragile ecosystems.
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary page about Coastal Dune Community
The Importance of Native Species – Information and resource links from the Elkhorn Slough Foundation / National Estuarine Research Reserve
Coastal Training Program from Elkhorn Slough – Endangered Species Fact Sheet
About iceplants(Carpobrotus edulis) – Wikipedia article
President Barack Obama Proclamation – Establishment of the Fort Ord National Monument