Botanical Exchange Program: Urban Botanizing and Presidio

Hey everyone! Welcome to the first entry in an exciting two week series that will document our adventures in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
First off, here are some quick introductions: the representatives from the Missouri Botanical Garden this trip are Betty Withrow and David Gunn. Joining us from Russia is Vladimir Shatko (Specialist in Mediterranean flora; Moscow Main Botanical Garden), Mikhail Shustov (Lichenologist; Moscow Main Botanical Garden), and Anna Erst (Biotechnologist; Central Siberian Botanical Garden).

On Sunday, August 7th, Dave and I received our visitors from the San Francisco International Airport. Despite a 16 hour flight and an overnight layover in the JFK (NY) airport, everyone seemed in high spirits and ready to see the sights.

Capturing the diversity of California's Urban Landscape

With excited curiosity and cameras in hand, we embarked on a long day of walking through the streets of downtown San Francisco. According to my pedometer, we walked 10 miles in 7 1/2 hours. Much of our time was spent stopping at a plethora of urban plantings and wracking our brains trying to identify plants that are unusual to our typical home landscapes. Botanical lingo was flying from every mouth, filling the ears of any eavesdropping passerby with a strange gumbo of morphological terminology and taxonomic musings.

Vladimir among the Hydrangeas and Hedera on Lombard Crooked St.

Identifying plants in a median.

While touring the urban landscapes, Dave and I where endlessly astounded by the amount of diversity in each median, right-of-way, and tiny yard. We were constantly cursing Henry Shaw for picking Missouri for the site of his Garden. (just kidding... maybe...)
Anyway, during our trek we made it to the Presidio were we spent about 3 hours marveling at the planting spaces. Especially the trees! We came across an amazing stand of Quercus ilex. Oops, I meant AMAZING!!! (photos below)