Why I Get Up In The Mornings
Hardiness Zones
- plants are adapted to their native environments
- and they grow best in those native environments
- for example
- a palm tree wouldn’t do too well in Alaska
- they’re much happier in the tropics
- the USDA has actually gone and defined geographic areas across the US that are suitable for particular types of plant growth
- and here’s a map of those regions!
- how miraculously informative!
- a resource for conservationists and gardeners alike!
- but
- it is only useful
- if you know how to interpret it
- the zones are defined by minimum temperatures
- so the lower the minimum temperature a plant can withstand
- the hardier it is
- and the lower the number of it’s hardiness zone
- but wait
- there are draw backs to this system
- these measurements don’t take maximum summer temperature into account at all
- so areas that have similar winter temperatures and vastly different summer temperatures are still classified in the same zone
- other important but not considered variables include the frequency of unexpected cold snaps, soil moisture, snow cover, humidity, etc.
- the list goes on
- luckily the good people at Sunset Books published a compendium of these left out measures
- the Sunset Western Garden Book divides the US up into 45 distinct, more specific regions
- taking into account things like wind patterns, elevation, precipitation and more
- the most recent edition was published in 2007
- and America is not the only country
- that has devised a way to share what we know about different zones with the general public
- Europe, Australia, and Canada have also defined their regions by USDA zone standards
- so places like Ireland (as pictured above)
- are defined and well understood too
Incredible that we have collected enough data about this planet to be able to classify large swaths of land by their survivability and plants by their hardiness. We’re data seekers, theory constructors, idea synthesizers of the natural world. I couldn’t venture to name a worthier cause.
“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings.”
— Richard Dawkins
