A Guest Blog from a Visit to the University of California Botanical Garden
As serious and passionate gardeners, whenever Ryan McCallister and I have time, we always enjoy visiting botanical gardens.
During Ryan's recent holiday trip home to California, he blocked out some time to visit the University of California Botanical Garden, a 34-acre establishment that includes some of the most diverse landscapes in the world, with more than 10,000 types of plants, many rare and endangered species. First established in 1890 and laid out geographically, the UC Botanical Garden features nine regions of naturalistic plantings from Australasia to South Africa, along with a major collection of California native specimens.
Ryan took some photos of those plants that interested him, enjoy.
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- The UC Botanical Garden is in the Berkeley Hills, inside the city boundary of Oakland, with views of the San Francisco Bay. It has more than 20,000 accessions, representing 324 plant families, 12,000 different species and subspecies, and 2,885 genera. Outdoor collections are arranged geographically and nearly all specimens were collected in the wild.
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- In 1976 the Mather Redwood Grove was dedicated in honor of Steven T. Mather, a graduate of UC Berkeley in 1884 and the founding director of the National Park Service in 1916. Ryan sought out these redwoods, saying he had to find some during his trip. These were first planted in the 1930s.
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- Walking around, one can see how they tower above all the other plantings. Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood, and California redwood.
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- These trees are long lived evergreens that can thrive for 1,200 to 2,200 years or more.
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- The wood color can range from a light pinkish brown to a deep reddish brown. Sapwood is a pale white-yellow. Curly figure or Redwood burl (sometimes referred to as “lace” or by the name Vavona) are occasionally seen.
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- Elsewhere at the Botanical Garden – Encephalartos eugene, maraisii a species of cycad in the family Zamiaceae. It is endemic to South Africa, where it is limited to Limpopo. It is known as the Waterberg cycad. This plant grows in the sandstone hills of the Waterberg Range at almost a mile in elevation. The habitat is grassland and savanna.
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- Deterocohnia brevifolia, also known as Abromeitiella brevifolia, is a terrestrial bromeliad with small rosettes of fleshy triangular leaves with toothed margins and a sharp tip. It grows up to 6 feet in diameter, forming large compact rounded mats of hundreds of rosettes.
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- Nerine undulata is a species of flowering plant of the family Amaryllidaceae and native to the eastern Cape of South Africa. it is a bulbous perennial with narrow grasslike leaves that are almost evergreen, and umbels of 8-12 slender, crinkled pale pink, dainty flowers.
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- Pachypodium lamerei is a species of flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae. It is a stem succulent, photosynthesizing mainly through its trunk, and comes from the island of Madagascar. It has large thorns and leaves mostly just at the top of the plant, and large, fragrant flowers.
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- Welwitschia mirabilis of namibia is unusual. This plant has large, strap like leaves that grow continuously along the ground. During its entire life, each plant produces only two leaves, which often split into many segments as a result of the leaves being whipped by the wind.
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- Lithops is a genus of succulent plants in the ice plant family, Aizoaceae. Members of this genus are native to southern Africa. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek words for ‘stone’ and ‘face’, referring to the stone-like appearance of the plants.
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- UC Botanical Garden has a collection dedicated to Southern Africa. It includes plants from South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia. The plants of this region are famous for their diversity of flowers and forms. Many species are found nowhere else in the world.
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- Ryan also saw a small pond of newts. A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae. The terrestrial juvenile phase is called an eft. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, alternating between aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Adult newts have lizard-like bodies and return to the water every year to breed, otherwise living in humid, cover-rich land habitats.
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- The plants of Australasia are native to New Zealand, the mediterranean-climate and subtropical regions of Australia, and the high elevations of the South Pacific islands. The islands of New Zealand have year-round rainfall and a temperate climate. Ferns and conifers are prominent in this flora and are featured in the collection.
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- This is called Loropetalum – a genus of four species of shrubs or small trees in the witch-hazel family, Hamamelidaceae, native to China, Japan, and south-eastern Asia.
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- Its leaves are vibrant and range from a bright lime green to the deepest, darkest of purples.
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- Ryan stopped to take a quick photo with it.
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- Look at the large leaves on this plant. Gunnera tinctoria, known as giant rhubarb, Chilean rhubarb, or nalca, is a flowering plant species native to southern Chile and neighboring zones in Argentina. It is unrelated to rhubarb, as the two plants belong to different orders, but looks similar from a distance and has similar culinary uses.
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- The anchor plant is a South American shrub, Colletia cruciata, of the buckthorn family, having flattened green branches and yellowish-white flowers. Look closely, it is nearly leafless, but grows slowly up to nine feet tall with flattened two-inch wide triangular spine-tipped gray-green photosynthetic stems (called cladodes) arranged in opposite pairs, that somewhat resemble a ship’s anchor.
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- Acacia pravissima, commonly known as Oven’s wattle, wedge-leaved wattle, and Tumut wattle, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is an evergreen shrub native to Victoria, the South West Slopes and Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia.
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- And this is California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, also known as golden poppy, California sunlight or cup of gold – a species of flowering plant in the family Papaveraceae, native to the United States and Mexico and Ryan’s favorite bloom. Thanks for always taking such interesting photos, Ryan.
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