trees of the panhandle

Posted on September 16, 2010 by fromthethicket

I have a copy of this small booklet published in 1973 by Elizabeth McClintock.  She only identifies herself on the last page of the booklet, in a brief note explaining that this is the second edition;  the original was published eight years earlier (1965?).  In the note she lists some of the changes that occurred in the Panhandle during those eight years .  .  .  trees that fell or were removed, some replaced and some not.

Elizabeth McClintock is still the major authority on the trees of the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, although she died in 2004.  Having studied botany as an undergraduate at UCLA and then earned her PhD at the University of Michigan, she became a curator in the botany department at the California Academy of Sciences in 1949 and remained there until she retired in 1977.  Her specialty was plant taxonomy and she took a professional interest in the trees in Golden Gate Park throughout her career, documenting the various species found in the park, adding specimens from the park to the Academy’s herbarium and writing many articles about the park’s trees in the Journal of the California Horticultural Society (later the California Horticultural Journal) and in Pacific Horticulture, where she was associate editor for twenty-five years.  Her articles have been edited and collected in: The Trees of Golden Gate Park and San Francisco, by Elizabeth McClintock, edited and arranged by Richard G. Turner Jr. ( Heyday Books/Clapperstick Institute, Berkeley, California in collaboration with Pacific Horticultural Foundation, Strybing Arboretum Society, Friends of Recreation and Parks, Friends of the Urban Forest and the San Francisco Tree Advisory Board; 2001).

So, some thirty-seven years years later, as I enter the Panhandle at the corner of Baker and Oak Streets with McClintock’s booklet in hand, I feel like I have the most authoritative guide at my shoulder!  My goal is to see how many of the trees documented in this booklet are still standing today, what condition they are in, how they have aged or changed.  The booklet divides the Panhandle into four sections and pinpoints the major trees in each section, with numbers on the plan keyed to a plant list.

map iv -- trees of the panhandle

I circle the big ones, the ones that, through strength in numbers and great size, make the Panhandle so magnificent.  I only make it through the first section (from Baker St. to Central Ave.), but it’s enough to get a sense that many (most!) of the trees identified in the booklet are, in fact, still there:  thick groves of redwoods  .  .  .  magnificent elms  .  .  .  monterey cypresses .  .  .  eucalyptus of various shades and shapes  .  .  .  all contorted by time and weather and many looking somewhat the worse for wear and age (unkempt, ungainly), but collectively what a window to the past!

There are some holes, but for now the fabric is holding up.  In some places saplings have been planted to fill in potential gaps.  They seem dwarfed by their surroundings; how long will it take for these little ones to reach sufficient size to replace the grand, old trees as they die?  I will come back another time with an arborist;  someone who can read these trees better than I can, diagnose their age and condition, tell me about the plan to preserve and regenerate this venerable urban forest!

Posted in trees/urban forest | 5 Comments

enjoying the music

Posted on September 14, 2010 by fromthethicket

the opera crowd

Posted in events in Golden Gate Park | 1 Comment

opera in the park

Posted on September 13, 2010 by fromthethicket

People-watching was as much fun as the music during the 37th annual Opera in the Park yesterday afternoon!  Lying back, bellies full, soaking in the magnificent arias delivered with such verve and polish from the stage, humming along with one luscious melody after another, watching the ragged edge of fog competing with blue sky overhead, we in the audience were feeling mightily content!

Sitting up to survey the crowd, I was struck by how eclectic the audience was  .  .  .  much more so than the usual opera crowd at the opera house.  Ages ranged from infants to octogenarians.  Dogs present, of course.  Fashions included shorts, tutus, leather, chains, leg-warmers, flip-flops, a skin-tight spider-woman suit.  How many in this crowd, I wonder, would also attend an opera at the opera house, pay the high ticket prices, sit for four hours or more, wait patiently through the slow unfolding of melodramatic plots and lengthy recitatives for these gem-like arias?

One goal of Opera in the Park, of course, is to build support and enlarge the audience for opera (hence the 50% coupons distributed to the Sharon Meadow crowd yesterday).  Probably impossible to accurately measure success in that regard, but thinking along these lines I realize that there are a number of parallels between Opera and 19th-century parks like Golden Gate Park.  Both are forms of popular entertainment (and historic forms of art!) that are struggling to stay relevant in our time, to adapt to the changing tastes and mores of contemporary culture while retaining core values and structures dating to an earlier time.  In both cases, management must walk a fine line between the expectations of the traditional audience, grounded in tradition and familiarity, and the possibility of expanding that audience through imagination, experimentation and innovation.

More on this subject later, but food for thought:  which will prove to be more adaptable in the 21st century  .  .  .  Golden Gate Park or the San Francisco Opera?

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science on the living roof

Posted on September 4, 2010 by fromthethicket

When Renzo Piano, the Italian architect, first stood on the roof of the old California Academy of Sciences building and looked around at the surrounding green of the park and the hills beyond, a vivid image of the new building came to him:  he would lift up a patch of the park and slide the museum underneath!  And that is essentially what he did.

The green roof on the Academy symbolizes that patch of parkland envisioned by Mr. Piano.  A large, undulating expanse of green (2.5 acres), it feels something like a magic carpet that just happened to land and settle down over the domes and heating ducts of the new Academy.  It is, of course, an energy-efficient means of insulation and a water-capturing feature that contributes to the sustainability quotient of the building.  But it is also truly a living roof and it has been evolving and changing since it was planted in the fall of 2007.

It started with 9 native plant species, but now has 75 species and growing.  The original plant species were all ground-hugging, giving the roof a more uniform appearance, like a real carpet  .  .  .   more architectural (perhaps more in keeping with the architect’s original vision).  But now, with the addition of grasses, monkey flower, california fuschia and other plants that stick up, spiking and clumping, it is looking more like a garden  .  .  .  a little scruffy  .  .  .  real.

In fact, it has evolved into a fascinating outdoor exhibit and a living laboratory.  Under the direction of staff at the Academy’s Naturalist Center,  groups of citizen scientists are monitoring the roof on a regular basis, recording baseline data about the plants, birds and insects that live in the roof.  To find out more about this project go to:  http://www.calacademy.org/science/citizen_science/livingroof/

And while you’re on the roof you might also notice a square, bare plot of earth, roughly ten foot square, with no plants growing at all right now.  This is a “succession plot,” a kind of earthen petri dish to monitor the “natural” succession of plants on the roof.  The plot will be filled with biodegradable trays of sterile earth and watered along with the rest of the roof.   High school students, under the direction of  Dr. Frank Almeda, Senior Curator of Botany at the Academy, will keep track of plants that sprout and grow there.  Will they be exotics, from seeds dropped by birds or the wind?  Or native species, offspring from plants already growing on the roof?  Will there be a battle for succession?

Wouldn’t it be great if the park at large could be a living laboratory like this, a place to experiment and learn about urban ecology, study the effects of climate change, monitor wildlife throughout the year .  .  .  so many possibilities come to mind  .  .  .

native garden in the sky

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bird walk

Posted on September 1, 2010 by fromthethicket

We met at 8 a.m., the first Sunday of the month, in front of the Botanical Garden, about thirty sleepy people with binoculars around our necks. The San Francisco Audubon Society offers monthly bird walks in the Botanical Garden, led by volunteer birders whose public spirit matches their passion for birdwatching.  Splitting into three groups, we straggled after the guides, who had large birding scopes on tripods slung over their shoulders.  My group followed Dominik Mosur, a tall, pony-tailed Audubon Society board member, who works at the Randall Museum.  He turned out to be an outstanding birder with encyclopedic knowledge of the birds and bird habitats in the city.  As we walked around the large, central lawn, he began to call out species, both seen and unseen (many hiding in dense foliage, but identified by their calls).  A pair of Black Phoebes nesting by the fountain  .  .  .  crested Stellar’s Jays  .  .  .  Scrub Jays  .  .  .  Hummingbirds (Anna’s and Allens)  .  .  .  the list grew rapidly.  By the end of the two-hour walk we had spotted 30 species.

Highlights included a California Quail, which used to be commonplace in the park, but now only a couple of pairs are thought to be nesting here.  Sadly, we also came across a dead quail chick, seemingly run over by a maintenance vehicle.  Quail nest on the ground and have fallen victim to predators, such as feral cats and squirrels.  According to our guides, these predators’ hunting prowess has been aided by the removal of underbrush in the park in an effort to combat homeless encampments.  However, as the arboretum is locked up at night (no homeless encampments here!) and there seems to be plenty of underbrush, I think there must be other explanations.

The story of the dwindling quail population, and accounts of other once-abundant bird species in the park, can be found in the Handbook of the Birds of Golden Gate Park, by Joseph Mailliard (California Academy of Sciences, 1930).  Mailliard listed 111 bird species in the park.  Interesting to compare Mailliard’s list to the Checklist of the Birds of Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, currently sold at the Botanical Garden bookstore for 75 cents.  This current list includes 167 species, reflecting sightings by birdwatchers from the late 1940s to the present.

Another highlight of the morning was a Black Crowned Night Heron, which has taken up residence in a very green pond near the Botanical Garden nursery.  It was easy to study through the scope, standing like a statue in the water, its black cap adorned with a single, long, white feather at the back.

My favorites were the Pygmy Nuthatches (tiny birds with bobbed tails), running up and down and around the trunks and branches of trees head first, feeding off the bark.  We also saw flocks of Common Bushtits, calling tsit, tsit, tsit and hanging upside down to eat insects and spiders off the undersides of leaves.  And a chattering cloud of Red-masked Parakeets flew by.

I came home feeling happy to have seen so many birds, seemingly flourishing in the Botanical Garden.  I wonder if this count is typical of the park at large?  It was interesting that when we walked through the California Native section, there were no birds in sight!

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were those trees planted or left there?

Posted on August 30, 2010 by fromthethicket

On a recent afternoon, walking along the fern-lined Redwood Trail of the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, enjoying the musty scent of crushed redwood bark beneath my feet and the transcendental light filtering through the foliage high overhead, I overheard a snippet of conversation.  Two young people, twenty-something, casually dressed, not obviously tourists, but apparently discovering this part of the park for the first time, were looking up in awe and perplexity at the magnificent trees above.  The young man was saying to his companion  .  .  .  “yes, but someone made the decision to leave these trees here.”

The fact is, those trees were not left there, they were deliberately planted.  Like most large green spaces in American cities, Golden Gate Park dates to the late nineteenth century.  Its 1017 acres were set aside for a public park in a period when civic leaders thought big and large tracts of land were still available near the centers of growing cities.  The driving idea behind parks like this was that they should offer the pleasures of the countryside to people living in the city, serving as a palliative to the congestion of urban life.  These great public gardens were designed at a scale to afford fresh air and long vistas, extensive riding and walking routes, generous lawns where children could run and play freely, idyllic scenery for picnics and lakes large enough for boating.  The expansiveness of the landscape matched the thinking behind it.    The idea captured the imaginations of civic leaders throughout the world in the second half of the nineteenth century, and parks like this are now so ubiquitous that they hardly seem remarkable.  Nearly every major city in the United States has at least one large public green space like Golden Gate Park, dating to this period.

Prominent citizens began to demand a large park in San Francisco in the 1860s and the land for the park was secured by the city in 1870.  Like their counterparts in east coast cities, prominent businessmen and civic leaders in San Francisco recognized the symbolic value of a large park, to signify that San Francisco was a city on the make, a world-class, livable city.  A citizen’s petition calling for the establishment of a large, urban park in San Francisco in 1865 stated:   “the great cities of our own country, as well as of Europe, have found it necessary at some period of their growth, to provide large parks, or pleasure grounds for the amusement and entertainment of the people  .  .  .  Until some provision is made to meet this need, however successful and impressive the business growth of San Francisco may be, it will not be an attractive and impressive place for families and homes.”[i]

The model was Central Park in New York,  designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.  Central Park, the first great green space to be developed in an American city, was itself modeled on European parks, particularly the great parks of London and Paris.  Following on its success, Olmsted became the expert of choice to design new parks proposed in cities around the country, including San Francisco.

Called upon to consult on the location and development of a large park for San Francisco, Olmsted advised a different site, more sheltered and closer to the city center.   But his advice was ultimately ignored and civic leaders selected the current site for the park, a roughly three-mile long, rectangular tract stretching from the Western Addition to the ocean.   William Hammond Hall, the young engineer who drafted the plans for Golden Gate Park, patterned it closely after Central Park in New York.  He drew curving roads and paths, designed luxurious greenswards surrounded by thick woods, lakes for boating, hills offering picturesque vistas, playgrounds for children, and so on.   All this had to be constructed on top of the shifting sand dunes that covered most of the site.  The first step was to add layers of top soil and anchor the unstable sand with massive plantings of lupine and other native ground covers.  Then exotic plants were introduced to create the desired effect, an effect that included few indigenous plants and had little to do with local ecosystems or nearby rural scenery.  Golden Gate Park, like other parks of this era, looks more like England than like the local countryside.   Its rolling green lawns, masses of introduced trees and thick embankments of azaleas and rhododendrons are a far cry from the indigenous landscape of golden-brown hillsides dotted with live oaks, which can be seen in the Marin Headlands, just across the Golden Gate Bridge or down the peninsula.

Dating to an era when appreciation of Nature had more to do with aesthetics than scientific understanding, great public parks like this are, in many ways, like hot-house flowers:  exotic, sensitive, prone to invasive pests and diseases, requiring expensive and tender care.  They were not designed to be self-sustaining or even low-maintenance.  They require lots of special care, consume large amounts of water and fossil fuels, produce large amounts of waste.

Which begs the question:  how would Golden Gate Park be designed today?

[i] Clary, Raymond H.,  The Making of Golden Gate Park:  The Early Years, 1865-1906. (Don’t Call it Frisco Press, San Francisco, 1984). p. 2.

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catch a gopher or a fish?

Posted on August 27, 2010 by fromthethicket

In front of the ornate, Victorian-era Conservatory of Flowers at the eastern end of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Tim is poking the end of a long, black hose into a hole in the grass.  He’s after a lone gopher, given away by two tell-tale mounds of earth in this green expanse of carefully manicured lawn.  If he can catch the first intruders, before they start to multiply, he can save himself many hours of work.  Luckily, this time the invasion is occurring in a flat area, for it’s much more difficult to flush out tunnels on a hillside.  After a minute, he removes the hose from the hole, and pokes it down in the middle of another small pile of dirt about three feet away.  Within seconds, a small animal pops up out of the first hole, and instantly Tim grabs it with a set of long pinchers he has ready in his other hand, calling upon reflexes honed by years of practice.  He drops the squirming, dripping ball of fur neatly into a waiting bucket.   Later he will release it in the wilder western reaches of the park, where burrowing rodents have freer rein.  At least that’s what he tells passers-by, if they inquire.  The truth is, gardening is a ruthless business, especially in a large, public garden like this, and Tim has neither the time nor the inclination to romanticize it.

Meanwhile, at the WPA-era Angler’s Lodge, a group of would-be fly fishermen stand evenly spaced on the levees surrounding a series of large rectangular casting pools, their arms moving up and down like automatons, sending their fishing lines snaking rhythmically through the air. Concentric ripples in the water break up the reflections of the giant, jagged Monterey Cypresses surrounding the ponds.  Volunteer instructors move from one beginner to the next, guiding arm movements and imparting words of encouragement.  They are members of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, who apparently live to fish and willingly share their prize-winning technique, free of charge, to anyone who shows up at the Angler’s Lodge on the second Saturday of each month. Dan, the lead instructor this morning, has won numerous trophies at national casting tournaments, many held right here in Golden Gate Park.   More than fifty people have turned out on this damp, chilly morning.  Men outnumber women about two to one; ages range from eighteen to eighty.  At the end of the morning, elated after three hours of zen-like absorption, participants return their rods to the tall, thin, pine-paneled lockers that line the tackle room of the Angler’s Lodge, and gather on the stone terrace overlooking the pools, for barbequed hot dogs, chili and fishing stories.

Nearby, but out of sight of the would-be fly fishermen, Randy is stuffing his sleeping bag into a sack.  Having spent a damp night in a thicket of blackberries, reminded of his precarious situation every time he rolled over and encountered their viscous thorns, he prepares to move on.  Staying more than a single night in one place risks detection by park patrols that keep campers like him under surveillance.  But the park is full of dense, neglected thickets of invasive plant species, like these Himalayan Blackberries, unmanageable by the meager crew of gardeners responsible for these 1,017+ acres.   Randy can draw a pretty accurate map of these out-of-the-way, overgrown parts of the park;  he knows the territory well, as he often prefers to spend his nights alone in Nature, rather than in a doorway or a crowded shelter elsewhere in the city.

Great parks like Golden Gate Park offer Nature in the midst of major cities throughout the United States, and around the world, from Paris to New York, Mexico City to Auckland.  These well-loved green spaces, most dating to the nineteenth century, are so ubiquitous that citizens of modern societies largely take them for granted and expect that they will always be there, unchanging and durable, offering beauty and tranquility as an antidote to hectic urban life.  Yet, most people know little about the history of these places, who bears responsibility for them, what it takes to maintain them today.  Although beautiful and beloved, these great public gardens are not as sacrosanct as we may think; they are actually subject to relentless social, political, economic and environmental pressures.   Proposals for changes, additions and subtractions regularly come before the government agencies and public boards that oversee them.  Each decision affects a park’s future.   Conflicting interest groups vie for access.  Maintenance budgets go up and down.  Around the world large public parks, created in the late nineteenth century, have been reaching a certain age and many are entering a period of crisis. Trees are reaching the end of their normal life spans.   Infrastructure needs up-dating.   Weeds run rampant.  Homelessness is an issue.

FROM THE THICKET will tell the story of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  This park is one of the most impressive examples in the world of historic urban green space, located in a well-known and widely admired city and, yet, unlike Central Park in New York, little has been written about it. The blog will reveal the mysteries of this incredible place and touch on its colorful natural and cultural  history, day-to-day operation, and what its future might look like. Like its sister public gardens throughout the country and around the world, Golden Gate Park is not the tranquil oasis it appears.  It’s a locus of political and social controversy, a juggling act, a Rube Goldberg contraption.   Contrary to what most people think, it’s not at all “natural,” but rather an elaborate and ingenious illusion that has required constant vigilance to maintain ever since it was created.  An overworked staff strives to keep it from falling apart. Its serene public image belies the drama behind the scenes. This blog will be of interest to lovers of Golden Gate Park in particular, but also to anyone who is interested in green spaces in cities, how we create and maintain such places, and what is potentially at stake for these venerable public gardens.

Stay tuned for regular updates FROM THE THICKET!

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