More Plants of Leona Canyon

East Bay Regional Park District provides a great resource for identifying plants and wildflowers in the parks. You can access or download wild plant or wildflower photo guides from: https://www.ebparks.org/natural-resources/biodiversity/plants-checklist.

• The wild plant guides are available for the district, and sorted by scientific name or family name.
• The wildflower guides are available by district or by a specific park, and sorted by sorted by color, then by family and genus within the color.

The photo guides also identify whether a plant is a native plant or introduced, and whether an annual or perennial. I am using the information to identify a few more plants from our recent hike in Leona Canyon. This is a great resource for anyone new to the San Francisco Bay Area, or who wants to learn more about plants in the area.

California Buckeye in bloom	Climbing Morning Glory vine
Horse tails	Purple annual

HTML Tables

Native Plants of Leona Canyon

I know more about Mediterranean and desert plants than I know about the local plants in the San Francisco East Bay. I plan to change that, and hope the change works its way into my shady, woodland, Oakland Hills garden.

A great local resource is the East Bay Regional Park’s network of parks and open space preserves. These parks enable you to see plants in their natural regional environments, such as oak woodland, chaparral, coastal scrub, grassland, and redwood and mixed evergreen forests. I learned to identify a few of the local plants at the Leona Canyon Preserve in the Oakland Hills.

Lupine	Sticky Monkey Flower
California Blackberry	Coastal Sage Brush

HTML Tables

Preserves located close to population centers frequently include non-native plants introduced intentionally, or naturally from their proximity to personal gardens. This makes it tricky for the newbie to distinguish between native and non-native plants. The East Bay Regional Park District runs an ongoing volunteer program to remove invasive, non-native species from the parks and preserves.

Invasive French Broom provides beautiful
color, but forces out native plants.

The Teacher’s Trail Guide publication for Leona Canyon includes a great write-up of native plants: https://www.ebparks.org/parks/leona-canyon. The park-specific write-up for Leona Canyon also provides information about its native species. For more plant lists see the Wild Plant Checklists.

Special thanks to Quackit for use of the HTML table generator: Quackit Webmaster Tutorials

Leona Canyon Preserve

May is a great time to hike in the Leona Canyon preserve, which is located in the Oakland Hills. The canyon and hills are green from winter rains, and the wildflowers are blooming. The preserve is part of the East Bay Regional Park District’s network of parks and open space preserves. We took a short hike starting from the Merritt College trail head, but didn’t make it all the way down the canyon.

Lush vegetation on the Leona Canyon trail, near
the Merritt College trail head.

An interesting aspect of the trail is that to the East, the hillside resembles chaparral, and to the West, woodlands. This is typical of the San Francisco East Bay, where sunny facing slopes are dry with sparse vegetation, and shaded slopes, which are shrouded in coastal fog for longer periods, support lush vegetation.

Taking a breather to enjoy the canyon view. You can see
the difference in vegetation between the hill on
the left and the one on the right.

I am interested in seeing native plants in their environment, to learn more about what grows naturally in the area, and to consider what might be adapted to my shady garden. The brochure at the trail head is very informative about native plants, and their uses by the Ohlone people who lived in the area. The trail has corresponding markers for the information described.

To learn more about the East Bay Regional Park District: https://www.ebparks.org. To learn more about the Leona Canyon Regional Open Space Preserve, see the Teacher’s Trail Guide publication on Leona: https://www.ebparks.org/parks/leona-canyon.

To get to the Preserve:
There are two trail heads – one from the Merritt College campus, and one from Oaks Canyon Drive off Campus Drive.