GARDENING : ANCIENT VALLEYITES HAD PICK OF NATURE'S CROP.

Byline: Joshua Siskin

Going back to nature in Los Angeles in an attempt to emulate the first inhabitants of this area would mean not only giving up your house, but also your wardrobe and your garden.

The Gabrielinos, who lived in the Valley for at least 2,000, and perhaps as many as 12,000 years, were a Stone Age people who didn't wear clothes and didn't raise crops.

Like Adam and Eve prior to the apple incident, they did not have to plant in order to reap. Their diet consisted almost entirely of gathered nuts, berries and seeds, and occasionally some meat. But they never planted. Backyard gardens were as foreign to their world as, well, the kind of permanent dwellings that back yards suggest.

The Gabrielinos lived in domed huts of mud and thatch, which, when they became unlivable from accumulated rubbish or the outbreak of disease, were burned to the ground; new living quarters were soon set up somewhere else.

Just as the Gabrielinos lived with plants, so too, apparently, did they die with them. According to Dr. Allan Edwards, who has written microhistories of Encino and Sherman Oaks, the Gabrielinos first made contact with Europeans (a group of Spaniards led by Gaspar Portola) in 1769. Less than a century and a half later, in 1901, the last Gabrielino was dead, the culmination of one of the most phenomenal group disappearances in human history.

The oak and the walnut that they relied on for sustenance were felled in large numbers during the 1800s. In 1835, 56,000 cows and 64,000 sheep grazed on 238,000 acres of land controlled by the San Fernando Mission. Soon, the ecosystem upon which Gabrielinos relied - trees, berried shrubs and grasses - was decimated. Ironically, the livestock responsible for most of this destruction was itself substantially killed off during a severe drought some years later.

The Gabrielinos, whose population proliferated around watering holes in parts of present-day Chatsworth, Encino, Toluca Lake and Franklin Canyon, did not die out because of war or animosity on the part of the Spanish. Quite the contrary, the Spanish missionaries wanted to make the Gabrielinos into landowners and farmers who would cultivate vast holdings that would be cleared of trees.

But the Gabrielinos did not want to be farmers; the idea was foreign to their experience and to their culture. In fact, the trees that had been removed were what had given them their identity.

Edwards suggests that the Gabrielinos succumbed to a mental malaise, losing their purpose in living along with the plants that sustained them. This purposelessness was intensified by the alcohol they began to consume; 32,000 grapevines had been planted on the land of the San Fernando Mission.

Associating one's identity with certain plants, and especially trees, was not peculiar to the Gabrielinos alone.

Buddhism gets its name from the bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa), which Buddha is said to have sat under for 40 days prior to his enlightenment. The Roman emperor wore a crown of bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) leaves upon his head. Phoenicia means ``land of the palm,'' and Lebanon, which encompasses ancient Phoenicia, has a flag emblazoned with a cedar tree.

In the Bible, seven plants - wheat, barley, grape, fig, pomegranate, olive and date - are given unique status. Special blessings are to accompany the consumption of these grains and fruits. Psalm 52 likens someone who believes in God to an olive tree, and Psalm 92 compares a righteous person to a cedar of Lebanon and a date palm.

Speaking of date palms, I was pleasantly surprised the other day when, walking down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, I stepped on some dates. Four date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) are growing opposite the remodeled Sav-On, just west of Cedros Avenue, on the south side of the street. These trees have been here for several years and I was convinced that it was just not hot enough in the Valley to grow dates - California's commercial date groves are in the desert between Palm Springs and Indio. I suppose last summer's heat was intense enough to produce fruit even here.

All date palms are dioecious trees, which means that there are separate male and female trees in each species. Out of the four Sherman Oaks trees, two are females (they bear the fruit) and two are males. Interestingly, the trees stand smack up against the north side of a tall building so that no direct sunlight can reach them. Nevertheless, considerable fruit has been produced.

Tip: Maureen Gerwig of Woodland Hills says that if you want to plant species that will not be harmed by dogs, consider California natives. She has planted deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) in which her dogs roll around without causing any damage.

The Gabrielinos never had any problems with their dogs, which they raised for companionship and for eating. ... Thanks to Dr. John Johnson of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum for providing me with basic information on the Los Angeles Indian tribes.

MEMO: Joshua Siskin's column appears every Saturday. He welcomes questions from readers. Write to him in care of the Daily News Features Department, P.O. Box 4200, Woodland Hills, Calif. 91365-4200. Topics of general interest will be discussed in the column.