In the Shadow of Giants
The hills above Oakland once held some of the largest redwoods ever seen, one estimated at 31 feet in diameter. Ten million years ago, such trees towered over much of...
Botany
Saving El Palo Alto
Imagine a landmark so prominent that anyone looking south from San Francisco or north from San Jose could spot it. Spanish missionary Padre Pedro Font wrote in his diary in...
Redwood Resources
Here are several local organizations that have recently taken steps to preserve redwood forests in the Bay region and beyond. Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) Together with the Midpeninsula Regional...
Purple Needlegrass Takes Root in the Capitol
David Amme, author of “Grassland Heritage” in Bay Nature’s April-June 2004 issue, called purple needlegrass “the undisputed candidate for official state grass.” Now that may soon become literally as well...
Grassland Heritage
When Spanish explorers first saw the San Francisco Bay in 1769, they found a land cloaked largely in perennial grasses. But the extirpation of the native elk herds that grazed...
Indian Paintbrush
It turns out that some of the Bay Area's showiest wildflowers are also parasites that draw water and nutrients from their neighbors.
Why do mushrooms come in so many shapes and colors?
In technical terms, mushrooms are the charismatic sexual reproductive structures of fungal individuals whose main body (fine, cobweb-like filaments called hyphae) is well hidden in the soil or amongst leaves...
Oak Woodlands Resources
To learn more about California’s oaks, contact the following organizations: California Oak Foundation 1212 Broadway, Suite 810 Oakland, CA 94612 510-763-0282 www.californiaoaks.org California oak advocacy and education organization. Online monthly...
Confronting Sudden Oak Death
Although the disease is popularly known as Sudden Oak Death, the funguslike organism that causes it, Phytophthora ramorum, is also responsible for less severe symptoms in a number of other...
Book Review: Plants of the San Francisco Bay Region: Mendocino to Monterey
by Linda H. Beidleman and Eugene N. Kozloff, University of California Press, 2003, 505 pages, $29.95 (www.ucpress.edu). Linda H. Beidleman, an instructor at UC Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium, and Eugene...
