Plants Fungi

It’s time to head out to your nearby national parklands for lots of spring cleaning and restoration. Celebrate Earth Day, National Volunteer Week, National Youth Service Day, and National Park Week by pitching in for your Golden Gate National Parks. There’s something for everyone!

While the East is still buried under 3 feet of snow, harbingers of spring have begun to bloom all across the Golden Gate National Parks. What can you expect to see in March, as you explore one of our many park trails?

Love is in the air! With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there will be many sweet treats popping up on grocery store shelves and on restaurant menus to entice you and your Valentine. Many will contain one of nature’s sweetest offerings: strawberries.

At your next holiday feast, impress friends and family with some fresh knowledge. Read on to learn the origins of popular holiday foods and discover their closest relatives, found in our parks. Please don’t forage for these items (quite a few are inedible)—but fill your plate with some food for thought!

This plant, erroneously identified as “holly,” gave Hollywood its name. And its merry berries certainly lend a festive air to the parks during the holiday season. Read on to unmask this mystery plant.

How many times have I walked under the same trees and failed to look up, staring at my own two feet as I walk? Well today was different, someone told me that the oak trees of California are masting, and I wanted to see if it was true.

It was three years ago that the Franciscan manzanita was discovered along the old Doyle Drive. How is that manzanita doing in its new home? And what are the plans to re-establish a sustainable population of the plant and the other species that historically grew with it?

One sure sign of “summer” in the Golden Gate National Parks is the sight of fluffy white seed blanketing hillsides. But where do these seeds come from? Where are they going? And why do we care? A Presidio seed collector takes a closer look.

The Presidio Native Plant Nursery—one of six nurseries in the Golden Gate National Parks—will soon open a long-awaited structure: a new 75’ by 110’ shadehouse! Learn why this building is so important—and submit your ideas for what we should name it.

Some have asked: Why don’t we just buy plants from our local nurseries to restore the park? In short, the Parks Conservancy grows native plants from seed because such a practice increases the chances of the plants’ survival.