The study and science of plants.
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
Wildflowers of Northern California’s Wine Country and North Coast Ranges, by Reny Parker, New Creek Ranch Press, 2007, 282 pages, $24.95 www.renyswildflowers.com Reny Parker is passionate about wildflowers. For 17 years, she has found and photographed them in their wild … Read more
Most people know to watch out for mistletoe at holiday parties, but there's a lot more to this plant than that one-note holiday refrain.
Mention extinct species, and most people think of long-gone mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. But we know that some Bay Area species have disappeared in just the last 200 years. Or have they? Prompted by rediscoveries of lost species in Solano and Contra Costa counties, we decided to see what other missing flora and fauna might still be out there, awaiting a patient observer.
Thanks to the efforts of dozens of volunteers, a biologically rich watershed on the Russian River has become one of the newest additions to our state park system.
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
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.
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
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
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
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
