Category: Plants
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Starting the new year with a little gardening
There was a break in the rain on New Year’s Day so I headed over to the school. I carried a couple plants with me that had been growing in pots on our patio for a while: California Aster (Symphyotrichum chilense), cultivated from overflow from our yard, and goldenrod (probably Solidago velutina ssp. californica), salvaged…
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Pittosporum tobira’s sticky seeds
Back in April, I wrote about Pittosporum tobira, hoping to put a few facts into my memory. One thing that “stuck” with me a little: that the genus name refers to them having sticky seeds. Now that the seed pods are popping open, the source of the name seems clearer: Seed pods popping open on…
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Covington Sensory Garden Natives Blooming November 1, 2025
The Covington Elementary sensory garden features a lot of native plants. Here are the ones I noticed blooming Saturday while we were working on some upkeep. Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) Many of the plants in the main yarrow patch in the garden aren’t just done blooming; their tops are brown and crispy. This one in…
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Interview with Judy Schwarz
Judy Schwarz, who manages the native plant section at the Palo Alto SummerWinds location, is an icon in the local native plants community. A few quotes about her from the GardeningWithNatives mailing list: “Judy is a wonderful resource and advocate” (link), “Judy at [SummerWinds] in Palo Alto is the best!” (link), “Judy at [SummerWinds] Palo…
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Interview with Ginny Hunt of Seedhunt
Huge gratitude to Ginny Hunt of the wonderful Seedhunt.com, “Seeds of California Native Plants and More”, for being up for answering a few questions via e-mail. Previous articles about her work include “Unusual Seeds For Curious Gardeners” (2004; Archive), “Sowing Wildflowers” (2009; Archive), “Hunting for seeds: Watsonville woman”s website offers hard-to-find natives, salvias, restios” (2018;…
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Geophyte filter in Calscape
I see that it’s been just a little over a year since I heard back about volunteering with Calscape, a little under 11 months since my first commit (“Allow setting calscape server under test via flag”). It’s been a good year working with the Calscape folks and other volunteers, and I hope it’s something I’ll…
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Willow seeds germinated within 6 days
The young one and I planted some willow seeds recently. I was impressed to see yesterday that they had germinated in at most 6 days. (I wasn’t checking them everyday so I’m not sure exactly when they germinated.) It’s thrilling to see these little leaves. I want to say “new life”, but I shouldn’t forget…
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California geophytes
On Reddit, bobtheturd said, “Calscape doesn’t do a good job filtering for geophytes, so wondering which are your favorites. I’m in the Bay Area, so more specifically interested in those.” (The post got some interesting replies.) Calscape describes itself like this: “Calscape is California’s hub for California native plants and native plant gardening, created for…
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Pittosporum tobira
Our neighbor’s Japanese cheesewood (Pittosporum tobira) is blooming, and it smells great, like sweet citrus. I’ve been wanting to learn a little more about the plants around me so I think I’ll start with this one. Some photos: According to Kew’s Plants of the World Online, it’s native to Japan, Korea, Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, and Vietnam.…
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From redwoods to chaparral
A paragraph that caught my attention in John Young’s book Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains: Thirty lumber mills operated for seventy years on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, changing the landscape from a verdant parkland of giant redwoods to dense, chaparral-covered slopes with rocky gullies carved by…