Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Preface -- 1. The Golden State -- 2. Pre-Hispanic Herbaceous Vegetation -- Spanish Explorations -- The Viceroy Mandate and Spanish "Botany" -- California Vegetation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries -- Desert Scrub Esteril -- Coastal California Pasto and Zacate -- Baja California -- Southern California -- Santa Barbara to Monterey -- Monterey to San Francisco -- Summer Barrens in the Interior -- Flowers and Barrens -- 3. Invasion of Franciscan Annuals, Grazing, and California Pasture in the Nineteenth Century -- The Bunchgrass-Grazing Hypothesis -- The Written Record, Spanish Land Tenure, and Diseños -- Grazing by Native Herbivores -- Buildup of Cattle -- Self-Sufficient Grazing Economy -- Distribution of Cattle -- "Wildstock" and Matanza -- Cattle Expansion to the Interior with the Gold Rush -- Wild Horses -- Sheep Grazing and Other Livestock -- Early Expansion of Franciscan Annuals -- Coastal and Interior Valley Pastures -- Perennial Bunch Grassland -- Summer Barrens in the Interior -- Wildflowers and Bunch Grasses in the Desert -- Carrying Capacities and Productivity of Historical California Pastures -- Drought, Fluctuations in Livestock, and Overgrazing -- Space-for-Time Substitution versus Historical Records -- 4. A Century of Bromes and the Fading of California Wildflowers -- A New Exotic Annual Grassland -- Early lnvasion of Bromes and Other "Second Wave" Invasives -- The "Altar Cloth of San Pasqual" -- Floral Brilliance and Collapse along the "Circle Tour" -- "Second Wave" Invasions and the Fading of California Wildflowers -- Historical Development of Exotic Annual Grassland -- 5. Lessons from the Rose Parade -- Notes -- Appendices -- Appendix 1. Location of Franciscan campsites, Franciscan place names, and modern place names.

Appendix 2. Spanish plant names for California vegetation -- Appendix 3. Selected earliest botanical collections of exotic annual species in California -- Appendix 4. References to wildflowers in the Los Angeles Times, The Desert Magazine, and the Riverside Press Enterprise -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.