Should you prune native California plants?

What Would Deer Do?
The California Bay Laurel is
well suited to sheering,
if you believe what the deer do.

Good Question and many people say that you are likely to kill the native plant if you don't do it the right time of year. Many of our plants evolved with fire and root-sprout. 

Many have evolved with a four-footed garden maintenance crew. Other plants live in creek beds that alternate between drought and torrential water. 

You've got to be observant and refer to those experts who have had experience.

• Las Pilitas - "How to Prune Native Plants (without killing them)"
• Yerba Buena - "Basic Pruning & Deadheading Techniques For Common California Native Plants"
• Take a class from your local native pruning expert at Merritt College
• Care & Maintenance of Southern California Native Plant Gardens (Cuidado y Mantenimiento de Jardines de Plantas Nativas del Sur de California) 
• California Native Gardening: A Month-by-Month Guide

Not a deer, but one of the many browsers in our East Bay parks.

The "Hoo-Hoo strategy" of some native plants

I propose a term for the strategy of native plants to compete with the browsers. I have seen chamise, oaks,  and California bay laurel use this strategy.

A seedling hunkers down for years being nibbled nibbled nibbled while building their roots. Each year, they send up shoot and each year they are nibbled down, until, perhaps there is a good rainy year and tastier items to nibble than bay/oak/chamise leaves. That is the year that they make a run for the sun. This shoot springing from a rounded head shaped shrub is a "Hoo-Hoo."

The term Hoo-Hoo was originated by the International Concatentated Order of Hoo-Hoo. I learned about the term in 2015, the Centennial year for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The Exposition in San Francisco was home to a Hoo-Hoo House, a very unique log building next to the Palace of Horticulture.

In my blog about the Hoo-House and its gardens, I discovered that the term 'Hoo-Hoo' had been used to describe an alarming tuft of hair that grew on top of the otherwise bald head of lumberman, "Charles H. McCarer, who later became Hoo-Hoo’s member #1 and the group’s first Snark."

Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum),

with a Hoo-Hoo emerging at the top of a well-pruned shrub.

California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica)

This California Bay Laurel successfully attained its tree form.
Note the "Tutu" at the base that continues to be browsed. 

This California Bay Laurel is waiting to make its break.

California live oak shaped around some rocks in the Hayward Hills.
The Hoo-Hoo looks a bit like a triumphant climber on a rock outcrop.