Disappearance of Native Oaks in the Bay Area
Although solidly rooted in California’s natural and cultural history, our native oaks are disappearing at an alarming rate. The loss of these magnificent trees to urbanization and Sudden Oak Death...
Botany
Quail Ridge Wilderness Conservancy
Purple needlegrass may soon gain recognition as one of California’s official state symbols, like the golden poppy, our state flower since 1903. For native grass advocates, “the hope is that...
Fruits of the Forest
The classic image of a redwood forest is one of stately tall trees, dense shade, and lots of green. The columnar trunks of the giant trees draw our gaze up...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
