Field Guide to the Lost Species of the San Francisco Bay Area
A field guide to help Bay Area naturalists in their search for local, lost species that are presumed extinct.
Botany
Book Review: California’s Wild Gardens
California’s Wild Gardens: A Guide to Favorite Botanical Sites, edited by Phyllis M. Faber, University of California Press, 2005, 248 pages, $34.95 Recent years have seen the increasing use of native plants to create water-wise gardens in our cities and … Read more
Book Review: Firescaping
Firescaping: Creating Fire-Resistant Landscapes, Gardens, and Properties in California’s Diverse Environments, by Douglas Kent, Wilderness Press, 2005, 149 pages, $18.95 Given the propensity for California’s wildlands to ignite, Douglas Kent’s Firescaping is a much-needed addition to the libraries of home … Read more
Caching In
Think of the western scrub jay: screeching, assertive, a bully and glutton at backyard bird feeders. But also, as Judith Larner Lowry has noticed in her West Marin yard, caching acorns, bay nuts, and other seeds, many more than the birds could ever hope to recover. Given that these seeds can’t move uphill on their own, we owe our oak-studded hillsides in part to the forethought, and forgetfulness, of this very familiar bird. Lowry’s advice? Sit back and let a few of our local jays’ missed meals take root.
Book Review: Field Guide to Plant Galls of California and other Western States
Field Guide to Plant Galls of California and Other Western States, by Ron Russo, UC Press, 2007, 400 pages, $24.95 www.ucpress.edu Many authors would be hard-pressed to write a guide to plant galls that is not also an industrial-strength sleeping … Read more
Record Spring Rain, 2006
All that springtime rain may seem a distant memory now, but the record still holds: San Francisco had the rainiest March on record, and the city’s season-to-date rainfall is 12 inches above the norm of 22 inches. What effect did … Read more
Speak of the Devil
Mount Diablo is such a towering icon of our landscape that it is sometimes easy to forget how much complexity lies within its familiar outline. Indeed, the mountain holds many stories: from the drama of its birth under the ocean, to its (mis)naming by early American settlers, to last year's rediscovery of the rare Mount Diablo buckwheat. Today the story continues, with the mountain and its surrounding ridges and canyons anchoring a bold vision for a broad swath of protected open space and wildlife corridors stretching from Concord to Livermore.
Gone with the Wind
The old adage says the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but that’s really just the beginning of the story from the tree’s point of view. The real excitement starts when animals&mdashbirds, deer, people—come along and carry the apples … Read more
Marsh Gumplant
Defining the edge of a shifting body of water like San Francisco Bay, whose exact extent changes with every tide, every season, every storm, can be tricky business. In our region the regulators sometimes fall back on a botanical criterion. … Read more
Mount Sutro’s Untold Understory
It’s almost impossible to miss Sutro Tower, the lanky broadcast antenna that looms 977 feet above the summit of one of San Francisco’s tallest hills, itself over 900 feet tall. However, few people know that underneath that landmark sit 61 … Read more
