A Wandering Botanist

In a spring escape, I was in San Francisco in late March. We visited museums, parks, and restaurants.

Roof, California Academy of Sciences

I had not been to the California Academy of Sciences in more than 20 years. In that period, the building was completely rebuilt, with a green roof. I had been doubtful about green roofs--where people grow plants on the roof. I know they have been used for millennia in parts of Europe, but those are wetter climates than San Francisco. So I wondered about watering and keeping plants alive in shallow soils. Or, if the soils aren't shallow, the weight on the roof. 

We took a winter escape. To San Diego, California, in January. I knew it could be warm there, but it wasn't. Heavy rain had just swept inland and behind the front the highs barely reached 60 oF. In the sun, it was pleasant, but not very warm.

Beach, Coronado Island, San Diego, California

I wrote last week about highway iceplant, Carprobrotus edulis (link). In 1970 as a new graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, I chose to write a paper about it. I had an Anthropology-Zoology major and writing a paper about a plant for Botany Department professor Herbert Baker was well out of my comfort zone. It is true, as I indicated last week, that I seized on iceplant as conspicuous, but there was more to it. During breaks, my roommates and I explored California, especially the coastline. I saw icesplant hanging off the cliffs at the edge of the Pacific and enjoyed incorporating my observatioins and photos into my assignment. Botanists go interesting places, for work.

Iceplant, Carpobrotus chilensis, California coast 1970 There's a pink flower in the center, 1/5 of the way down

Visiting coastal California, you can't miss iceplant (Carprobrotus edulis). It grows in big patchs of pointy green fingers, covering the ground in a monoculture. Probably every visitor and resident in California gets to know it. In 1970, I was a new graduate student taking a Genetic Ecology course  at the University of California, Berkeley, from Herbert Baker. He assigned a research paper about a plant. I had no idea what I was doing. I saw iceplant and chose that for my project. 

highway iceplant, Carprobrotus edulis

So I go way back with iceplant. Iceplant is from South Africa. It was brought to California a hundred years ago and widely planted to stop erosion. It did that pretty well, and was an easy, low maintenance plant, so roads departments and parks, and people generally, planted it all over the place. In 1970 it was very widespread and people were just starting to wonder if that was good thing.

Iceplant on the Berkely campus 1970

I was in Monterey, California this week. I walked residential streets oogling the plants. Exotic plants with huge cascades of flowers, from places like Australia and South Africa. In full flower in April. And then I realized what I wasn't seeing: grass lawns.

Pride of Madeira, Echium candicans

It was November and San Franisco's flowers were blooming!

San Diego is at the southern end of California: you can see Mexico easily. Given that location, it has mild southern winters. It is also a very dry climate since southern California is almost desert. What rain they get falls in the winter. All of which makes a "Mediterranean climate," very like the climate of southern Italy and Spain.

And a terrific place to escape to in winter.

In researching English (or European) holly Ilex aquifolium (holly family, Aquifoliaceae) I generated questions and here are the answers to two that puzzled me:
1) Is the word holly derived from holy?
and
2) Is Hollywood, California named for a grove of European holly trees?

Forest, California coast

Tomales Bay, California

Variegated Agave americana sending up flowering stalk, Ruth Bancroft Garden, Walnut Creek, California

   Agaves (asparagus family, Asparagaceae) are a fascinating group of plants. Many have a life cycle in which they grow as a cluster of leaves (rosette) for years, then send up one huge flowering stalk. The tall stalk produces lots of flowers and seeds, using all the energy stored by the plant over the years. When the seeds are ripe, the exhausted plant dies.
   An hour east of San Francisco in the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, big agaves were flowering in mid-May, 2013. Wow!

blooming agaves

  Agaves, for example Agave americana, are called the century plants. However, as staff member Carol Babst pointed out, the century plant name is a misnomer, since agaves rarely live more than 25 years.

   You might not know how old your apple tree or lilac bush was when it died, but since the agaves flower so dramatically and die, people pay attention to their age.

    The flowering stalk is spectacular--10 or more feet high. But equally impressive is that after waiting 15 or 25 years--a long time to wait to flower!--the plants dies. One time to flower only.

    It seemed to me that a lot of agaves were blooming at Ruth Bancroft Garden and Carol agreed, saying that an impressive 26 individuals were in bloom.