Botanical Collections of the Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area offers a wonderful array of botanical collections. This is a great resource for learning more about plants, and the regions of the world from which they come. Here is a summary of some of my favorites, and the plant collections they offer.


 

Botanical Collection	Description
University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum	Mediterranean plants from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and California. http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/
Tilden Regional Park, Regional Parks Botanic Garden	Plants from California arranged in ten major geographic regions (such as Southern California Desert, Redwood, Sierras, Pacific Rain Forest, Valley-Foothill, and Santa Lucia). http://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden/botanic_garden
Conservancy of Flowers Golden Gate Park, San Francisco	Subtropical plants from places of exceptional beauty (highland and lowland); and special exhibits (such as dinosaur plants, and underwater plants). http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/
San Francisco Botanical Garden	Plants of the Mediterranean, South Africa, New Zealand, the Americas, California, Asia; and special collections (such as cloud forests, moon gardens, succulents, and ancient plants). Formerly Strybing Arboretum. http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/
University of California, Botanical Garden at Berkeley	Plants from around the world arranged in nine major geographic regions (such as Mediterranean, South Africa, Australasia, the Americas, and California); and special collections (such as Chinese Medicinal Herb, old roses, cycads and palms, crops of the world, tropical, and carnivorous plants). http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/

HTML Tables

This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start. Over the year, I’ll report on some of these botanical collections, and see what they have to offer.

The benefit of local botanical gardens is that you can visit them often and in season, ensuring you see something new every visit.