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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Lynda wrote:
> Oh, the savannahs are easy <g>  Lots of areas in Humboldt County
> could be classified as savannahs.  The redwoods are considered to be
> a rain forest and thus the wide open grasslands with few trees that
> butt up to the actual forests would qualify. No Okefenokee Swamp.  We
> do have smaller swamps (98 to be exact <g>) and parts of the
> Okefenokee would be classed out here as riparian forests.  And we
> have alkali marshes.   Putah Creek down at Sacramento is a good
> example of riparian forests.  So are some of the areas of the Mattole
> Valley. But, we've got the only *real* trees <g>  AND, the second
> place *real* trees and the oldest trees <<bg>>
>
> Oh, and ice caves.  Strange critters that we learned about when we
> moved up here.  There's one just across town from us.  Really
> interesting to go into it when it is 115 outside.

(I love this thread!)
Yeah, okay, you win on the ice caves...and you've got active volcanoes
as your ace in the hole..
We've got plenty of caves, but no ice caves that I am aware of..
And you may have "real" trees, but we have a fair amount of smaller
trees.  Remember, it ain't Georgia-Pacific for nothing. :)
As for the volcanoes, well, California is geologically young, and
Georgia is geologically old.  The only thing left of our volcanoes are
the granite plutons like Stone Mountain.  You have the Half-Dome at
Yosemite formed from a similar process.  If you are interested, you can
see a picture of them side by side on this page:
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/images/search/results.html?Keyword=Magma

The word forest has always amazed me...it means different things to
different people.  I recall traveling north of Phoenix and seeing a sign
touting Prescott National Forest..I look around and start laughing
because all I see are saguaros and chaparral with a few pinons or what I
call baby pines..  In the mind of a Georgian, if there's sand and cacti,
it's not a forest.  I have spent my life thinking of Appalachian forests
as forests..lots of deciduous hardwoods mixed with pines, cedars, and
hemlocks for the evergreen nature.  On my trip out west, in Kansas, you
drive across the plains and suddenly there is a small gorge/gully with a
stream and a riparian "forest" below the mean surface of the surrounding
land.  That's like a trapped, isolated forest..lol...And then all that
is totally different from the forests of Washington state and Oregon,
where you have true rainforests on Mt. Olympus, and old growth forests
that extend down into California in places.  Sure there are some old
growth stands of trees in the Appalachian chain, but those out west
wouldn't call our forests true forests either.  It's all relative.  I
went to one of my coworkers homes south of Atlanta.  He had said that he
had one acre that backs ups to the woods. (BTW, in the south, woods
means a stand of trees not large even to technically be a forest, but
you can fantasize about forests if you are in the woods.  When you
actually live in a forested area, people still say "in the woods" even
if the woods really are forests.  In my mind, riparian forests are more
akin to woods than forests).  Anyway, when I got to his house, his
'woods' amounted to about 100 trees that was nothing more than a
greenbuffer for an adjacent part of his subdivision....lol..it's all
relative.

Oh, and by the way...I was watching a rerun of 'Millionaire' last night
and got a question right.  The question was something like this..
Which state allegedly got its name from a mythical paradise in a 1590's
novel?  The answer, of course, was California. (The wrong answers were
Arizona, Florida, and Texas)

Bev

--
Bevanron of EarthNSky Farm   Sleep well tonight, for somewhere in the
ocean's depths, MY son is protecting YOUR freedom.