Blowin’ in the Wind
Next time you sneeze, think of it as an homage to pollen, the key to the reproduction of plants all over the world. Look a little closer, and this stuff...
Botany
Gambling on Grass at Point Molate
Native plant advocates charge that the studies done for the proposed casino at Richmond’s Point Molate ignore the site’s rare collection of native grasses.
The Presidio’s Miracle Manzanita
A construction site along one of San Francisco’s busiest thoroughfares hardly seems like a good spot to find one of our region’s rarest plants. But that’s just where a passing...
With Rain Comes Life, and Death
After three years of drought, the forecast for a wet El Nino winter this year is welcome news indeed. Unless you're an oak or tanoak tree. Researchers fear a wet...
Cattails: A Wetlands Supermarket
Cattails are hard to miss, yet often dismissed. Whether in solitary clumps in a ditch or spread out in marshy fields, the burnt umber rockets hovering above dark-green blades add...
Coe’s Fire Followers
The 2007 Lick Fire was a firestorm that consumed 47,000 acres, most of it in Henry W. Coe State Park, east of Gilroy. Just days after the fire, park volunteers...
Naturalist’s Notebook: One Year After a Fire on San Bruno Mountain
A year after fire burned through San Bruno Mountain, artist Jack Laws visited to see the recovery of Buckeye and Owl canyons.
Call of the Galls
Standing sentinel near the highest point in the East Bay Regional Park District, an ancient blue oak is our window into a spectrum of life in the orbit of one...
Hard Time to Be an Oak
About one-eighth of California's land area is covered in oak woodlands. Despite that vast acreage, it's hard to be an oak in California. Threats to oak survival include the effects...
