List of San Francisco Bay Area wildflowers
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The San Francisco Bay Area is unusual, for a major metropolitan area, in having ready access to high quality rural and wilderness areas, as well as major urban parks. Particularly in spring, these offer a rich range of wild flowers. This article offers a List of San Francisco Bay Area wildflowers.
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Scope of this list
There are many descriptions of the California flora, and this list does not attempt to replicate or replace them. Some of these more comprehensive sources can be found through the External Links below. But the diversity of the state's geography and ecology means that the list of flowers that can be encountered within its borders is very long. Although the Bay Area's ecology is varied, it is nothing like as diverse as that of the state as whole; furthermore the wild life of the Bay Area is not entirely typical of the rest of California, and species that are common in the Bay can be scarce elsewhere in the state, and vice versa. This article therefore tries to provide a relatively compact list, covering the flowers that a resident of the Bay Area is most likely to see within its nine counties. Like all Wikipedia lists, this is a work in progress. It will start with flowers that are (a) common and/or (b) already have an article in Wikipedia. Introduced species, whether from other parts of the world or from other parts of North America, are included, but marked (I). Flowering shrubs and trees are only included if their flowers are significant.
Organisation of the list
At present the list is divided roughly into forbs, shrubs, and trees, but is not otherwise organised.
Flowering herbs (forbs)
- California Poppy
- Purple Chinese Houses
- Yellow Pansy
- Franciscan Wallflower
- Douglas Iris
- Baby Blue Eyes
- Ice Plant (I)
- Scarlet Pimpernel (I)
- Western Blue-eyed Grass
- Forget-me-nots (Myosotis discolor and M. latifolia, both I)
- Calypso Orchid
- Searocket (I)
- Fiddlenecks (several species, hard to distinguish)
- Pale Flax (I), Blue Flax
- Herb Robert (I)
- Cow Parsnip
- Common Star Lily
- Purple Salsify (I)
- Red Valerian (I)
- Crimson Columbine
- Artichoke Thistle (I)
- Wavy-leafed Soap Plant
Bushes, shrubs, and climbers
Flowering trees
Garden escapes
Distinct from introduced species, which have established themselves in the area, are garden escapes - plants that seed themselves, or just by exuberant growth, beyond the limits of gardens where they have been planted, but do not (yet) seem to be reproducing in the wild. Because of the large population of the Bay Area and the variety of gardening styles practised, many kinds of plant may be encountered as garden escapes. Among those seen are:
External links
- CalPlants photo archive - can be searched by county (http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/flora/)
- Search the Jepson Interchange by plant name, geographical location, or other keys (http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange.html)
- Wildflowers of the Golden Gate Park (http://www.nps.gov/goga/wildflowers/)