A naturalist on the “flowers of winter”
Art & Design | Botany | Climate Change | El Niño | Fire | Fungi | Geology | History | The Bay | The Ocean | Urban Nature | Water | Weather | Wildlife
Rare and once thought extinct, the dawn redwood is an ancient relative of the more familiar coast redwood.
Ten days ago the state set new heat records and brush fires broke out. Burn areas in the Santa Cruz Mountains rekindled. Then, over the last three days, a 2,000-mile-long filament of water in the sky burst over the areas that last week sat brown and smoking.
Huge crowds are harvesting mussels and other invertebrates. Could this damage the much-beloved reef?
Can volunteer scuba divers start a turnaround for Northern California kelp forests?
In the beginning, fire burned the world. Don Hankins’ Plains Miwok ancestors passed on this understanding of fire through generations, and he draws from it as a traditional cultural practitioner pyrogeographer when burning landscapes in California.
The Botanic Garden Bird Survey Team has recorded all of the birds they’ve observed in this corner of Tilden Regional Park, specifically tracking which species visit and when, what they eat, and the materials they use to build nests.
Photos of nine birds the Botanic Garden Survey Team has spotted in the garden in the last few years.
When to find and how to identify the three whales that regularly visit the California coast.
In the long dark days of January and February, humans aren’t the only ones who take comfort in the company of others.