After visiting UC Berkeley yesterday, I zipped up the hill to also see the Regional Parks Botanic Garden of California native plants. They have a new webpage. It was going to close in an hour, and the sprinklers were running in the coastal section, so I didn't stay long.
Trillium ovatum.
Mahonia amplectans (San Diego Barberry).
Aristolochia californica, Dutchman's pipe, larval host of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, Battus philenor. I followed a B. philenor imago throughout the UC Botanical Garden yesterday, but I couldn't get a picture of it. Alas, I didn't see one here.
Today, a friend and I rode the mini steam locomotives in Tilden Park. Tilden is a three by three-quarter mile park just east of Berkeley. Not a big park by California standards, but very accessible and lots to do inside. We visited the CA native plant garden on whoreticulture.
The train tracks run through a mixed hardwood landscape of oak and redwood, but also bay, coyote bush, and pine. As morning fog evaporated off the leaves, the air filled with the fragrances of California trees. We're currently in the midst of some some great weather in the Bay Area. We get these few weeks of sunny, 70 degree days every winter. It could (and should) revert back to the cold rainy pattern soon, but in the meantime...many people wonder how they could live anywhere else.
It's a twelve-minute ride and tickets are only $2 so we rode twice--once in the middle of the train, and then in the first car behind the locomotive. My video files were too large for me to upload, and the quality isn't that great anyway. If you want to see more footage, you can surely find better examples on YouTube.
