 Welcome to the San Francisco Public Library, virtual library. I am Anisa. I am one of the librarians working in our program and partnership department. And I'm so happy to have partnered with the California Native Plant Society year but when a chapter. And I just realized this is the opening slide. So you're all here today to see children's gardens with San Francisco native plants. And we have some special guests. So thank you for being here and thank you for being our partner. You're my point of chapter. It is summer stride. This is a perfect program for summer stride. I think it's just incorporates youth children and saying that summer stride is not just for youth and children is for all ages. You can sign up. You can sign up on Beanstack. It's an app, or you can do the old fashioned way and color your hours in 20 hours gets you that iconic SFPL tote bag you can see that art right there in the circle SF loves libraries by Bay areas. Kailani Juanita and she just has a wonderful new book out on Chronicle books, and she's amazing and young and artist and just vibrant and we're so happy to be able to partner with her. And we want to welcome you to the unseated land of the Aloni tribal people and acknowledges meant the many Romney to Sholoni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards on the lands in which we reside. SFPL is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members. And we have a resource list of all sorts of amazing books and websites that you can check out and learn more about first person culture and land rights and it's in. I'll put those links in the chat box. It's going to be one link to a massive doc on everything we talk about today, and any links that come up with Susan I'll try and stick those in there as well. As well as Susan's amazing resource, she is building it's going on about 300 pages now. It's about 14 pages now. So that will be linked in there as well. I do want to mention that September 25 1pm we have Susan back for drought tolerant gardening and this has been a big request so I know this one will be well received. And now just we have coming up so much happening summer every Tuesday June July August we have author talks. So these are all the authors we have coming up. I hope to encourage you all to join us. There are some amazing humans out here. Maybe some of you know Shanta she is one of the co founders of other foods out there and the way out there other avenues, other avenues. So she's an amazing human being I can't wait we're going to we're forcing her into come in and tell her her story of her food journey. It's called that. So I also encourage you come out. I know it's a beautiful weekend, which you know, we got to take those and but before you go out come out June is black music appreciation month and we have historian author amazing human being Linda Jackson will be talking about black music and black musicians from San Francisco. All of this stuff. All of, can you believe this music fans this is a good one I just finished this book. It's pretty juicy. All right, let's get on with today's event. Let's see. So, I'm going to turn it right over to Susan and she can jump in to talk about Children's Gardens and Susan gardens in San Francisco is clay soil. She's a member of the California Native Plant Society you're going to chapter. Karasoff has only the easiest plant survive approach to gardening. She grows a buffet of colorful native edibles and pollinator plants, specifically gardening to feed caterpillars and bees. And today's event is close presented by Rachel Dyer. And I love Susan she's very resourceful and smart and brilliant answers all of the questions. And she just has the smoothest voice as well. Susan Karasoff. Hi, and welcome to Children's Gardens with San Francisco native plants. I'm here with Rachel Dyer very lucky to have Rachel as part of this presentation today. Rachel is a parent and an educator, and she's with the California Native Plant Society, San Joaquin Valley chapter. She's also with NorCal permaculture and California Rare Fruit Growers Association. Anisa Malati is going to from the library is going to be working the YouTube chat and Bob Hall with California Native Plant Society, and with the Golden Gate Audubon Society is going to be monitoring the, the, the zoom Q&A, as will Rachel, so that some of those questions can be answered during the presentation. I do want to set some expectations. As a parent, you are doing a lot of work and good work. And so I want you to be respectful of your energy and your family's energy. Bring, start, start wherever curiosity is for you curiosity and a sense of adventure. We don't need to do everything in this presentation, we have got a lot of activities, the best ones were suggested by Rachel Dyer. So the activities are there for you to think well that would almost be fun, but I would like to do that with all pink plants or I would like to do that with all short plants or I would like to do that with all butterfly plants. Whatever your interests are, and your family's interest and then follow those and, and be respectful of your energy. I, I really don't expect you to do everything or anything, just take, take care of yourself. I would like to include edible plants as part of this presentation and a subset of all of the native edible plants because there's a lot of native edible plants and there's a separate presentation with the library about edible native plants. These particular plants have been selected because they are soft and almost entirely edible and so they're safer to have in gardens with young children. You can also buy plants so that you absolutely have a positive identification. We have a couple of links in the zoom chat with a reference from Rachel thank you for the toxic plant for people from the University of California extension, there's a link for toxic plants for pets. There's an ethnobotany link, ethnobotany is the fancy word for how indigenous people use plants for food, medicine and tools. And there's a link to the California native plant society you're going to buy a diversity resources page that has got separate specific plant lists for local edible plants, hummingbird plants be plants etc. So, the San Francisco public library and the California native plant society are not responsible for any reactions that you or your family have to these plants. There are some seeds associated with them and seeds do tend to have protein in them and proteins are the things that tend to cause allergies and reactions just be careful like that. So if you have questions in the Q&A in the zoom Q&A. If you have another activity for children that's not included here, please consider sharing it with the community it's been wonderful to see the community and questions and suggestions and other presentations so please share that in in the zoom chat because the zoom chat can be saved. Okay, so let's talk. Let's talk about why plant native plants plants for toddlers on babies age three to six seven to 1010 to 14 and 14 and up. We will talk about container gardening with native plants year around buffets for people in wildlife gardening with native plants and native garden resources. So why plant native plants. Native plants are the base of the food web. There's a insect researcher at the University of Delaware named Doug tell me, and he and his graduate students determined that each plant supports a different number of caterpillar species. He did that for the mid Atlantic region where Delaware is located, and then the US Department of Agriculture paid him to collect the existing published data, put that into a database that's being hosted by the National Wildlife Federation. This is specifically caterpillar species that are butterflies and mods other insects have a caterpillar phase but they did just the butterflies and moth caterpillars, and it turns out that for every county in the United States. It's willows oaks and cherries have the toast the most number of caterpillars eating their leaves. So we want to plant native plants, and we want to be really happy when we see those leaves chewed on. That part's chewed on because it means that we're feeding caterpillars and caterpillars feed baby birds, baby birds have soft little throats. Adult birds have got stronger throats like adult humans do and they can eat crunchy adult birds can eat crunchy insects, the way humans can eat a crunchy tortilla chip chip, well you wouldn't feed a crunchy tortilla chip to a baby human. We can't feed crunchy insects to baby birds. And so parent birds are looking for caterpillars and aphids to feed their babies. Native plants support hundreds more caterpillar species than introduced plants, introduced plants are not native, and they usually feed between zero and two insects. So when we have native plants in our landscape, then we are able to feed birds and other creatures. We are seeing insect declines. And because we're seeing insect declines we are seeing terrestrial birds declining as well. Insects are looking for those native plants and birds are looking for those delicious caterpillars. I think that we could trust parks to hold all of our insects for us, and that's why we didn't have to have them in our private landscapes but it turns out that's not working very well into completely separate studies, one in Germany with a nature preserve with multiple nature preserves and one in Puerto Rico at a large nature preserve. Completely separate preserves, separate researchers saw the same trend over time where there's a loss of just plain number of insects. And less than 4% of the United States land are national parks, state parks and protected areas so we can't trust parks to save our ecosystems. That's not to us. So 61% of the land in the United States is privately owned in California it's 50% 85% of private land is residential that's that's me, that's you, that's your friends and relatives and neighbors. So the planting decisions we make are the planting decisions that drive whether or not we continue to have butterflies and bees and birds in our landscape. I live in San Francisco, 68% of San Francisco's paved I can't do much well it turns out you can. The San Francisco Estuary Institute had has a wonderful report called making nature city it's available for free on their website in English and in Spanish, and they looked at urban biodiversity success factor so biodiversity is that is is everything that is original to the landscape in terms of life. So it's mushrooms and fungi and plants and birds and bees and butterflies and foxes and coyotes. It's, it's everything. So what contributes to urban biodiversity success, it's native plants. It's green corridors, little stepping stones. So what you have is a north facing balcony and you are gardening in containers. You can still contribute to biodiversity. It's the quality of the green space so no invasive plants reducing introduced plants reducing the amount of lawn we have and avoiding pesticides and but not decides. It's the size of the green patch so our porches with containers, those still contribute. We need wildlife like coyotes that need very large spaces. California quail need very large spaces. And we need to take special care of things like water and aquifers and large trees. So because 68% of San Francisco's paved and less than 5% of our natural landscape remains every plant we choose to plant as an opportunity to feed our ecosystem. So what are we doing to plant in San Francisco if you wonder why is this hard. Well, if you look in our seven mile by seven mile city we have such a variety of different soils we have sand we have clay we have three different kinds of rock. And we have three north, south, fog and wind belts, and we have extremely variable rainfall now this the rainfall variability is is true throughout California in fact it's it's true throughout the west coast. But look at the error bars on that chart. We have had as little as seven inches of rain in our recorded time here in San Francisco and as much as 50. We get the 50 inches. When we get atmospheric rivers and that is true for California and the entire west coast Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. We all get our water when we get atmospheric rivers. Last year, the last rain year that we just went through we had eight inches of rain so almost the minimum that we've ever had, which is why we have so many drought stress trees. When we plant our native plants, and they've had actually three years to establish themselves and grow their roots in it in three different decent rainy seasons in a row. Then we have the ability to have more happy climate adapted plants. I wanted to give you a couple of references these are also in the zoom chat. We get these questions a lot. The toxic plants for people reference is at the University of California extension, and the ASPCA has a wonderful list of toxic plants for pets that's also in the chat. There are some weeds that are deadly Caledonia is a deadly weed. Very pretty but deadly pelatory and it's it's deadly in the root bulb so in a deadly to eat it's not deadly to touch but it is deadly to eat. Pelatory is a terrible weed here in San Francisco. It causes as much use in humans it's toxic for dogs and cats it's sticky and nasty so make sure to wear gloves to remove it. These are just a few of the things that are in our landscape without us having planted them necessarily and and they're bad for us. And I wanted to make sure you have the magic word ethno botany is the magic word this is the search term, because native food doesn't give me anything reasonable in a search in an internet search, but ethno botany will if you add ethno botany plus on a, then you get how indigenous people use plants and which plants are edible. The San Francisco public library has this this book is available both as the entire ethno botany book and just the edible ethno botany book and the San Francisco public library has got the edible ethno botany book by David by Daniel. It has a website, but it's just a search that lets you look one plant at a time. So these are some guides to today's presentation. This is, this will help you understand what is edible about any particular plant. We've got icons for leaves for seeds and nuts and seed pods for bulbs and roots for flowers and for fruit. We also have guides showing you the number of butterfly and moth caterpillar species fed by that plants leaves so take a deep breath every time you see a chewed leaf, it's a good thing. And then a little clock that shows a particular plant is long blooming for three months or more. So let's let's go through and talk about toddlers and baby age three to six activities for age seven to 10 activities for 10 to 14 and for 14 and up. So for toddlers and babies. Toddlers and babies are going to be putting things in their mouth so we need to focus on things that are edible. Also we're looking for things that are soft to fall on. And then there's some really fun activities. Thank you Rachel dire learning the rainbow of colors from your plants learning how to count from counting pedals and leaves. So here are some wonderful soft ground covers. There's self heal, which has got up that beautiful purple flowers Prunella vulgaris. I don't know how many butterflies and moms use that plant sleeves but there are some because I used to grow that plant next door at my neighbors, and it is entirely edible and it's very tasty. Yerba Buena is a wonderful plant. It's fog shade. It's friendly. It's native right here to San Francisco. It grows in sand and in clay. It's got edible leaves, seeds and flowers. It's in the mint family so it's entirely edible. And it's very fragrant. The leaves taste like a combination of oregano and mint. I absolutely adore it. It's a wonderful ground cover and those tiny white flowers are blooming right now and making my bumblebees very happy. They are on bees. Native bees are extremely friendly. They will move away from your child if your child comes into a landscape. The bees are just going to assume that your child wants to get some nectar or pollen from that from that flower and then they'll move, they'll move aside. If your child comes close, they are not going to sting your child they do not sting. Even honeybees that will sting if they're bothered don't want to bother you. The things that tend to sting in this landscape are the introduced wasps. And wasps can look a lot like a honeybee. But we just had 14 people in a field of flowers over at Minochalbreath Park because it's having a super bloom right now. And 14 people including two four-year-olds and nobody got stung and I had all kinds of bees. They just won't sting you in the landscape. So no done bees, they're really friendly. Off to the other soft ground cover. So California Sagebush is usually a three to four foot tall and wide bush. There is a ground, there are a couple of ground cover garden selections for it, Kenyon Gray and Montara. And it's very fragrant and soft and I love it, I have it in my landscape. And then Miner's lettuce is a wonderful ground cover. Delicious, annual. There's a couple of versions and the Claytonio Perfoliata is the classic Miner's lettuce, the Claytonio Sibirica is is native just north of here but I grow that too. All delicious. The Sibirica's got a little bit more of a showy pink flower but delicious. Scatter the seeds at the start of the rainy season and you will have salad in about six to eight weeks depending on how much rain you get. You can also just water it. I put it in pots as well as on the ground and it's just so much fun to eat. It's entirely edible. The leaves, the seeds, the flowers. It's wonderful. We've got a couple of different sages. The Hummingbird Sage which is that bright pink flower on the right is the only native sage here to San Francisco. It is the only one of California's about 70 native sages that can take some shade. This one likes shade, it likes fog, it's great in sand and in clay. And those pink flowers are edible and they taste like fruit punch. They are wonderful. It's got very large leaves. Those leaves are also edible as are the seeds. The black sage which is the sage on the left with the sort of pale whiteish gray flowers is the native sage to the east bay, the south bay and north bay. For whatever reason, it doesn't grow here. It does need full sun. It's also in the mid-family as is the Hummingbird Sage so it's entirely edible. The flowers, the leaves and the seeds. The flowers are a little bit spicy on that in a fun way. Both really fun plans to have in the landscape. California Sage Brush, we just talked about that in terms of having some ground cover capabilities. But this is the three to four foot bush and it's just soft, fragrant, a lot of fun. If you wanted to fall in a plant, that would be a fun plant to fall on as are both of the sages. They both have really soft, fragrant leaves. Edible Berry is a really fun plant. This is the lower right. Edible. Edible berries for about a day. It only blooms in the spring. It fruits in the summer. It fruits in late June, i.e., right now. This is such a delicious berry. It's in the raspberry family. This is because it's only ripe for a day. The day before it's that kind of interesting pinky beige color and the day afterwards it just dries up. You have to grow it in your landscape if you want to taste it. It's the only raspberry family member I know that doesn't have any thorns. It's got big, soft, friendly leaves. They're not that much fun to eat, but they're fine for you to eat. It's not something you would voluntarily eat, but if your toddler ate it, your toddler would be okay. I wanted to find out what a thimbleberry tasted like. I would of course not recommend that you go to Golden Gate Park right now where the thimbleberries are ripe. They've got thimbleberries on the south edge of the redwood forest, and then they've got thimbleberries in the children's garden towards the south end, the back, the south back end of the pond area of the children's garden. You would not go to the park and you would not eat a ripe thimbleberry because I would not recommend that, of course, but they are ripe right now. One fun game to play is learning your colors from edible native plants. We have got the yellow sunflowers and the orange California poppies. We've got the red of the berries, and the green of the leaves are the thimbleberries. Coyote mince a lot of fun. It's a low-growing plant. Purple flowers, very, very fragrant. It's in the mint family, so it's entirely edible. The flowers and the leaves, a lot of fun to follow on. Cheese sage is an annual sage. Not actually native here, but it's got bright blue flowers, edible leaves, and you can grow it in a container. One leaf onion is a lot of fun. This is a bulb, which means it's great in containers. It's got these beautiful pink flowers just finished blooming. The flowers are edible. It tastes like mild onion. The seeds taste like onion, sort of chidey tasting leaves. It's just delicious. I absolutely adore that plant. The bulb is edible, but keep in mind that if you pull the bulb out to eat, then you won't have the flower the next year. But edible, and you can cook with it. So if you buy a lot of them, those are a lot of fun. If you have a shady garden, we've got the yellow violet, and there's also a purple violet. Those are also both great shade, very, very shady. Ground covers, they go, it's called summer deciduous, so it's a perennial, but it will, the leaves will go away when they start stop getting water. I grow the yellow and the purple, the leaves are delicious. Brody is a lot of fun. It's blooming right now. Those purple flowers are edible, and they taste like lettuce. They have edible bulbs. But again, if you pull the bulb up to eat it, you don't get the flower the next year. You don't get to eat mine. Those bulbs do need to be cooked, as opposed to the onions where you can eat those. Raw monkey flower savory is a wonderful shady plant, likes a lot of shade. Very minty leaves, very minty flowers. A lot of fun. Having Bird Sage, we talked about that. Woodland and Beach Strawberry. The Woodland Strawberry grows on clay and chert, and the Beach Strawberry goes on sand. Woodland and Beach Strawberry's genetics are in the supermarket strawberry. Very small strawberries. And thank you to Rachel Dyer for letting me know that to look up this plant. I use that Woodland Strawberry because I garden on clay as a ground cover, along with a bunch of other ground covers. I also do Yverboine, and I do the violets, and I do the miner's lettuce, and I do the sage fesh because why not? Strawberries are in the rose family, and so there's a little bit of hydrogen cyanide in the leaves, and the little cap on top of the strawberry are actually leaves. So if the strawberries been sitting around for a while, what I've read is that the hydrogen cyanide will outgas and leave the leaves. But you would just want to keep that in mind. My understanding from the internet is that because I haven't eaten these myself, I grow the strawberries for the birds, is that if you eat just a few of them, it doesn't matter, but a lot of them will make a difference. So keep that in mind for your toddler. So let's talk just a little bit older, three to six. We're going to talk about digging and growing easy plants. So we want to have that positive sense of accomplishment. So only the easy, only the easy plants are going to make it into this presentation. We're going to look for observation skills for any leaf, native or not, looking at leaf textures and shapes. Is it serrated or smooth edge or pointy? Is it rounded? Is it fuzzy? Is it waxy? Is it gray? Have a scavenger hunt? Use your sketchbook and any kind of writing tool to record the plants you see and talk about number of petals and small and large leaves and colored flowers. Which plants have insects on them and which insects? Bees, butterflies, caterpillars, ants, ladybugs, pillbugs. Look at the rocks that you see, are there different colors and different kinds of soil and is there water? And start that imaginative and creative development, storytelling, visual, written music, poetry, dance, whatever, however your child likes to express himself, that's going to be wonderful. And to start that and to continue to have that grow as they grow is a wonderful gift to themselves, to your family, and into the world. So let's look at digging and growing in containers. Bulbs are my absolute favorite thing to grow because they are fall off a log easy. Get the bulbs, put them in any kind of container, get them out outside. Make sure they get either some rainfall or if your porch is covered some water, cold tea, cold cooking water, anything that doesn't have salt. Nothing that would have milk in it or carbonation or salt, but any other liquid is going to be fine. We've got 70 different kinds of onions that are native to California and I'm in kind of a collective them all mode because it's so friendly and the bees love them and they're delicious. If the real spear is another purple flower plant, purplish blue actually, it's blooming right now those flowers taste like lettuce. In the FDA we talked about that to sage minors lettuce, farewell to spring is a really fun plant. There are a variety of different colors the Anguiculata can take some shade. Amowana and Rubicanda both want full sun, the Anguiculata is going to come in a lot of different colors the Amowana and the Rubicanda will only come pink. They're edible, they're not delicious. I consider them to taste meh, but still they're edible so they're fun to have in a container and they're really great with the bees and the butterflies. If you've got ground. We talked about hummingbird sage and coyote, no we talked about Yerba Buena and Thillowberry we talked about poppies and California sagebrush and black sage and now I want to introduce you to Yero. They are a little bit medicinal but they're really soft, they're really fun to pet, and those flat flowers are fantastic for little tiny insects including giving butterflies a big place to land. I tend to see boy bumblebees sleeping on them at night, so they, they meet my extremely cute criteria, because boy bumblebees don't get to go back into their ground nest, once they hatch they, they have to leave the nest and so they need some place to sleep at night and they like to sleep on Yero so it's a lot of fun to have in the landscape and it's a long blooming plant. Let's look at age seven to ten this is San Bruno mountain by the way where you just get to see fields of hummingbird sage and fields of Huckleberry it's such a great place, wonderful place to go hike. So experiment with plants. It is okay plants are okay if you buy them, and they don't work out they are okay if you buy the seeds of the plants and they die. Plants are okay with that because you learned about that plant and the plant mom was like okay my plant went off and it went someplace else and it went far from me, and now it's getting a chance to to try someplace else. It is okay if plants don't survive. That's how we learn. The opportunity to be a weed warrior or a weed sheriff to learn to identify weeds and remove them. And there's an opportunity for a biodiversity challenge how many different living things can your family find in a garden. And look at the concept of an individual versus a species or a group, what plants grow in different soils, mapping the food web participants, starting to talk about native people and caring for the land. And having group activities perhaps weeding landscapes with neighborhood groups or scout troops groups of friends and family time and continuing that creative development. So let's experiment with with wildflowers. What kind of plants like dry and damp which plants attract which kinds of insects and birds, how do plants change what they look like as they grow from a seed. So wonderful plants to grow from seed. I will caution you with the California poppies and the sunflower, both of those have a very long taproot. So they would prefer to be in the ground, as opposed to a container. All the other California annuals are grading containers. Those two want to be in the ground. Weed identification, we have a lot of weeds in across the United States unfortunately. And some of those we planted on purpose because we didn't realize they would be weedy. And at the time we didn't realize that caterpillars need leaves to chew on. So our native plants aren't very good at fighting off weeds because our native plants have got all of the native wildlife that eat those plants and aren't as good as these plants that have been taken out of their wild areas and moved here where they just don't have anyone to to eat them. So nasturtiums and impatience and ice plant and valerian and fennel and Pampas grass are all invasive. And these are just some of the plants that we purposely put in our landscape that aren't actually good for us. So our aren't good for our environment. We do want to communicate to you and to your child that weeding is the only time to remove a plant from a public space or a wild space. California has an invasive plant council where they've got profiles of plants and plant right is a really great plants website that will help you take a look at why I would really like something like ice plant well they'll give you something that would work there instead. Map the food web. So plants are the only things that can take energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and water from rain. They are the base of our food web so they are feeding everybody else they are feeding people and birds and mice, their leaves are feeding caterpillars, and those are also feeding the food web. We've got decomposers like pill bugs pill bugs are really fun when you disturb the soil when you pull out a weed it's really fun to see all the pill bugs that show up. So there's an entire network of what's called Michael Raza fun guy. It's in the mushroom family that connect all of our native plants so that native plants can share nutrients and water during drowdy times. So consider going out with your family to any area, your your porch, any green space and mapping who you see and who's eating whom and who's eating what it's a lot of fun and start to pay attention where you haven't necessarily paid attention before and this may be where your child sees lizards or birds or caterpillars and then comes intrigued with them pill bugs definitely the really polies. Any place where you are intrigued and you start asking questions and your curiosity is engaged. That's, that's the place to dig in and find more information and learn all about it. It's a great time to go out and really hike, explore San Francisco's different geology and the different soils and our different plant communities and the wildlife species associated with those plant communities. So get some climate adaptation challenges for for plants and for the wildlife communities that depend on them and start really learning to to steward a land landscape and continue that creative development. So plans evolved in plant communities in these different soils and weathers and so it's really fun to go out and and see. The mountain has got a bunch of different plant communities the pretty presidio is restoring the bunch of the the creeks and they've been restoring their dunes. There are oak woodlands, little remnants left. The dunes and the coastal dunes scrub plant communities are out there for the Presidio the National Park Service has got some wonderful information on plant communities, fantastic educational information about geology. I recommend if you go out there and your child is interested in rocks. That's, that's a great way to get started they've got a lot of good information. San Francisco Department of Environment has got San Francisco plant finder. And they've got good informational plant communities and there is a nursery called Las Felitas. They've got information on plant communities across California, and they had that information out there before anybody else did and I appreciate it it's a great place to learn. For any particular plant community, go take a look and see the differences in the kind of wildlife that you see. Riparian is a fancy word for creekside. And that's where you're going to see salamanders and frogs and turtles and you're also going to see special plants and butterflies and insects that you wouldn't see elsewhere, because they need those plants to survive. We have oak woodlands. We have very specific creatures that are associated with our oak woodlands including the bright blue scrub J and the bright blue western bluebird. We've got foxes we've got coyotes we've got owls. We have wonderful caterpillars and wonderful butterflies. And the dunes and the dunes scrub have got some of our endangered butterflies the mission blue, the coastal green hair straight. The silver digger bee was rediscovered we thought that the had gone extinct but when the Presidio restored their dunes, the coastal, that the silver digger bee needs a pristine dune. And that bee came back the snowy plover right below it that bird is endangered. It needs it's a ground nesting bird, and it needs a pristine dune. That glowing worm is the western banded glow worm. It's only found in pristine dunes, throughout California all the way down to Los Angeles. It is the only bioluminescent creature we have west of the Rockies east of the Rockies you have fireflies west of the Rockies you have that glow worm. The quail prefer to hide in dune scrub. We've got the Anna's hummingbird throughout San Francisco but the Allen's hummingbird really prefers the dune scrub community plant community so if you are out there. Take up that Iceland and put in our native plants because we have fantastic creatures for you. So the climate change challenge you, you and your family can start to look at how plants undergo different environmental stress stresses, and what adaptations did they have to deal with those different stresses from the physical adaptations, a light grayish color of soft texture being summer deciduous to chemical adaptations where it's poisonous or it's itchy. We've got all of these climate challenges we've got all of these different fog and wind belts and we've got that rainfall variation so it's fascinating to go investigate that and stewarding a landscape. So, all of our landscapes, short of the North and South Pole, are either managed landscapes or they are formerly managed landscapes, and most of them are weeding and disrepair because it just takes a lot of human effort to go take out the weeds and put put back the plants that were originally there so that we can support that food web. Stewarding a landscape to remove invasive species and install local species as a gift between people between humans and wildlife and between generations. There are a lot of groups out there that are already doing restoration. And so you and your family could consider becoming part of one of those groups or starting your own neighborhood group. It would be green space closest to you. If it is not a specific park that's managed by San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, then it is probably a Department of Public Works site, and they really don't care what you do. And the city has got a group that's planting to support the green hair streak butterfly by creating a planted corridor, San Bernard Mountain Watch is removing invasive plants and planting for plants on San Bernard Mountain. And California Native Plant Society, Yerba Buena has got a lot of different groups across the city that are restoring our green spaces. You're welcome to contact any one of these groups if they're close to you and if they're not starting your own group. It's amazing when I'm outside working in one of these public groups how many people will stop and talk to me. And in San Francisco, you can get free tools from San Francisco Public Works. If you have a group that's committing to taking care of a green space, they call it an adopt a street program doesn't need to be the whole street doesn't need to be the whole block. It can be a little chunk of a green space don't commit to more than you have energy to do, and which is one of my top failures is I always want to commit to more than I can do. They will provide volunteer groups with garden tools and large bags and trash pickup. If the closest green space to you is a San Francisco Recreations and Parks Department there is a volunteer link go ahead and get a hold of them. They don't want to be there they'll they will bring the tools with them, and they'll arrange to meet you and your family or your scout troop or your neighborhood group to go and help take weeds out of a green space, the 14 people and two four year olds I was talking about a little bit earlier. That was in Ina Cobra park and San Francisco Recreation and Parks was there with us with tools. Ina Cobra is a state of County parks, also welcomes volunteers. So if you're not in any of these areas and you're calling from somewhere else your parks or green space groups may that are part of your city, or open space may also welcome you and your family, but I cannot stress strongly enough, choose the green space closest to you, because there's a lot of inertia, in terms of having to take transportation to get anywhere else. There is a biodiversity competition for middle school children, grades five to nine, called Earth Echo, it's a lot of fun and some barrier groups have been doing really well with that so you, and your child might be interested in that, or not. Age 14 and up. If your child has had this ongoing ecosystem education, then they may be ready to take on a larger project, if they're just starting now start small, start where you are start with what's close. If they're in the mood to do something bigger. We have all kinds of, of issues that could use their creativity their imagination, their energy. But their willingness to work on big projects, such as restoring freshwater systems and building habitat and green green corridors and looking at plant community resilience during climate change that would be a great science fair project as actually with the restoring the freshwater system. If you're looking at investigating the insect associations with your California native plant species compared to the introduced species, compare insects associations in your plant plant communities, looking at root systems and always always continuing that creative development. If your child is interested in this and only because it's a lot of work, if they're not interested, but restoring our, our freshwater systems life on land depends on access to freshwater. San Francisco has, we've got aquifers, we've got wells, we had creeks and lakes and ponds, and so many of those have been covered up. The Presidio has just been uncovering a couple of their creeks. This aquifer family could decide to design and install a bioswale that helps recharge groundwater start, it helps to slow and sink rainwater, and to help recharge groundwater and aquifers, it's remarkably difficult to find maps of these online. We have aquifers underneath Sunset Boulevard, along 36 and 37, and so San Francisco Public Utility Commission has started putting in some bioswales. We want to do everything we can to restore freshwater systems will just make life better for for humanity and for wildlife. We want to keep more water in our area, rather than have it run off that does a better job of sustaining our plants, which keeps moisture air, which helps keep our fire risk down. We talked about habitat corridors, we talked about the Green Hair Street corridor that nature in the city is doing. You can build a habitat corridor where you are and connect your habitat to existing habitat to nearby parks and green spaces by building and connecting green corridors and talking to neighbors and getting them to also plant plants for your local butterflies. We always want to avoid interacting with the animals they need to stay wild. At the resilience for your local plant community what happens when you only have some of those plant community members. I live in what was the Oak Woodland part of San Francisco and just watching little parts of that come together and watching the plants try to help each other survive our drought has been really interesting. We have a lot of native plants for whom the insect associations are not recorded and this is my list so far which are the and they're beautiful, so many beautiful native plants. And we just don't have the information on how many insects use the leaves for caterpillars. So that would be a wonderful science bill project. And compare the insect associations for a variety of species in a plant community, which species feeds a larger variety of insects. And these are just some of the plant communities we have here in San Francisco. And explore root systems. If your child is interested in root systems, it is a fascinating field of study and there's a lot of work to be done on it. So good opportunity for some science fair work. Let's talk about container gardening with native plants if what you have is a balcony with pots on it we have got all kinds of native plants that can grow there, including some long blooming edible native plants that are just gorgeous. These are shallow rooted animals. And these are bulbs bulbs are like an onion bulb or smaller, the onion that you would buy in the store and so if you think about how deep and onion that you buy from stores. That's how shallow your container can be can just be a window box it can be a takeout container, some holes in the bottom and a little bit of soil. And the bulbs put them in there, get some water, get them outside and see who shows up. I like to plant for a year round buffet, a year round buffet for people a year round buffet for hummingbirds because they want to stay in our landscape year round. And a year round buffet for bees, because there are we have 200 species of bees just in the Bay Area 1500 species of bees in California. They all hatch at different times, and they all want something else to eat. And so I like to grow buffets of native plants. When we grow buffet of native plants, even for ourselves or for adult butterflies for hummingbirds or for bees. As long as we've got the native plants the local native plants, we're also going to be feeding the caterpillars that feed the rest of our ecosystems. So here's a suggestion of some of the edible native plants that you can grow that will give you food year around the flowering plants that got on the edges. Those are the leaves that are available late in the year. But there are just wonderful, the huckleberries in the blueberry family it's much more interesting tasting than blueberries frankly blue elderberries a wonderful plant that gets to be about 30 feet. It's fantastic edible flowers and berries. The currents are wonderful. We want to look for the later flowering plants. So adult butterflies prefer those flat, flat places to land to send themselves to get a snack while they move on to find mates and really just enjoy themselves in the landscape butterflies are wonderful to have. And here it's because they want to stay in our landscape year around. They would really like us to plant something that is blooming late in the year. Those native currents, the native manzanitas, and the native barberries, those all bloom December to February, and they're one of the very that there's some of the very few plants are blooming at that time. They're just in our landscape, and then they help keep our hummingbirds there so that they get to be fed. March to June seem to be fine there's plenty of flowers in the landscape, but then July to October it can be fewer flowers and so California fuchsia is a great plant to have a landscape hummingbirds adore it. I love the coyote mint, the dead layer, all kinds of wonderful things that we can grow bees. I am very fond of bees because I like to grow edible native plants and I want them to be pollinated. And these are the most efficient pollinators bees also I have seen native bumblebee queens in my landscape as early as Thanksgiving I've got a friend who's seen them in her garden in October done in San Mateo. And the manzanitas and barberries again those are wonderful plants to have their beautiful flowers they're long blooming, and they feed the bees and the hummingbirds when so few other plants are available. That July to October area, sunflowers we were talking about how those are edible buckwheats coyote bush, seaside daisy Pacific Astor, wonderful plants that are blooming later in the summer. So when to plant figuring out your soil type and healthy ecosystem practices. Now is our equivalent of a snowy winter. It is a droughty summer, please do not plant now it is going to be confusing for your plants if you do decide what to plant now, and then plant during the rainy season. The rainy season has moved from September to October to November it is now starting in December this is probably climate change. So plant when it is raining. If it's cold and it's rainy and it's windy. That's the right time to plant. That's the right time to decide. Now's the time to decide what to plant. That's when you plant. If December is really really busy for you and I understand that it is with the holidays you can plant in January I realized that we tend to have that pause and rain in January, and then we'll get rain February through April if we're lucky. So it's still a really great time to plant the nurseries are open. You can go see what what the plants look like. You can taste some of those leaves when you've got a plant with a sign on it. Please consider planting then during the rainy season. You need to know your soil and your son in shade and because we have so many different kinds of soil here you'll need to kind of know what kind of soil you have. The other thing you can do if you don't feel like doing any of these experiments to figure out what your, your soil is is go take a couple of large spoonfuls of soil and put them in a cup and take it with you to a nursery and they'll help you determine what kind of soil you have healthy ecosystem practices. Keep those leaves are good. Keep those leaves on the ground that's where butterfly caterpillars crawl off to hide and then they they create their cocoons they need someplace to hide from birds. And birds are going to be using your, your dried flower parts for nest materials are going to be eating the seeds out of your dried flowers. They're going to nest in the stems, although most of them about 70% of them nest in the ground, most of them nest in the stems they have completely different life cycles than a honeybee does honey bees are from Europe and Asia. They're really really different. Our native bees really sweet really sweet tempered, but they want to they want to nest in the ground or in stems. The plants are feeding wildlife at all the plant stages, including when the flowers go to seed and the plants go dormant. There is a beautiful system called wabi sabi. It's a way of looking at the world and it's a way of looking at beauty and saying that there's beauty and imperfection. Wabi sabi, let that let that lead you to a more relaxed approach to chewed leaves and leaves on the ground and things being a little bit past their prime healthy ecosystem signs are caterpillars chewed leaves bird nest venus and fibbians and predators San Francisco So, plant lists we've got a bunch of them for on our website California Native Plant Society of Urbana on our biodiversity. We've biodiversity link. We've got edible plants and shade plants and butterfly plants and hummingbird plants. We've got all of that. I put all of that in the zoom chat and more resources. That is one of our native folks at Golden Gate Park. Early is really expensive. So I looked into some some ways to fund ecosystem education and some school garden resources, and some other resources so we. These are groups that fund ecosystem education for children the whole kid foundation is a subset of whole foods they specifically want to do edible school gardens but there are so many edible native plants. What they choose to do is edible native plants they will still fund it. Green School Yards America Foundation, Adams Legacy Foundation, National Environmental Education Foundation Western Growers Foundation for school gardens here out in the west and the planet, Captain Planet Foundation. They all have their own set of paperwork and funding cycles, but these are great places to go get school gardens funded. There are additional resources in terms of information from the California Native Plant Society Nature Conservancy Conservancy, we talked about the National Park Service earlier they've got a lot of good information University of California agricultural extension that's where master gardeners come from. That has a lot of really good resources, and I always love the last latest nursery they've got a lot of information for school gardens, what to put in your school garden on your website. The Native Plant Society at the state level has got a tool to help you choose your plants. It's got a 10 mile radius keep in mind that, and our seven mile by seven mile city we've got so many different kinds of soil types. So just check what they're recommending. And if you've got for instance sandy soil and it's recommending a clay plant or rock plant. Just ignore that recommendation. But for every plant they've got they recommend they include all of the butterflies associated with that. And they give you a bunch of different ways of selecting the plant so you can just look around covers just for shady plants, just for vines very convenient. For every plant they've got they'll also recommend where that plant can be purchased and give you a map, which is really convenient. All kinds of great tools to go out and and see nature, I happen to like sketchbooks, and any kind of sketching tool, it helps your family sort of really pay attention to what they're seeing. Gardening gloves are a good thing, binoculars and magnifying glasses really helpful. Wonderful children's books. Thank you Rachel dire for teaching ecosystem education to children. I naturalist is a wonderful citizen science tool to explore the plants and wildlife near you. There is a version for seek. It is a naturalist for children. There is no choice on the security setting for seek it is only maximum security with a naturalist you would get to choose. I recommend that if your child likes to take pictures of wildlife, it helps me identify plants and wildlife. I've gotten much better at understanding the wildlife and plants around me because I am taking pictures and it is helping me understand what I see. Oh, and showing me maps of where I can go see that wildlife around the city which is really fun to have an excuse to go see a particular butterfly in a particular area. There are some fun ecosystem games the wingspan board game is kind of complicated but it's really fun. It's all about birds and different landscapes. Woodlands grasslands and water birds there is the ecologies card card game. We talked about creativity via heart is so wonderful. She has done a bunch of wonderful YouTube's about doodling and math and edible math, and just up just so much fun. Thank you to everyone who took pictures on I naturalist so that I could use these pictures here in my presentation, as well as all the professionals who provided pictures, and all the people who reviewed. This is part of a native plant series with the San Francisco public library, all of the presentations that we've done are on San Francisco public libraries YouTube site, and the next one is going to be drop tolerant gardens. We have a native plant society we have free lectures free hikes we do restoration we do bad because see we want to build a world with you and your family, where there are butterflies and birds and bees and food and clean water and clean air, and we do this together. We are a community and we invite you to join us formally or informally. We would love to work with you. And so let's take some some questions. See. What's in the Q amp a. So, may you are asking to have a copy of the PowerPoint presentation slides. Yes, you may have it. If you would contact the public library they'll forward your, your information to me and then I'll send you. Let me know what format you wanted in PowerPoint keynote or PDF. Shannon. Oh, go ahead. It looks like I might have not activated the q amp a function. Oh no. Yes, so let's use chat, which I think Bob is doing already. Oh yeah we've got a lot of questions in the chat fantastic. There is a question and q amp a that's pretty good and I'm able to help answer with it, because I just watched presentation by be expert. But Shannon wants to know is planning native plants and containers on a roof deck still beneficial or is it too high up for insects. And from Sam Droghi's presentation he said that bees anyway will travel up to 14 stories to use the plant so anything below 14 stories will work for bees, as far as other insects I don't know about that. So that California Academy of Sciences has got a roof garden. It's fabulous there that the admission to the Academy of Sciences is extremely expensive and I'm sorry about that. If you want to go see what surviving on a roof garden and the insects are up there. That's, that's the one roof garden I know that's publicly accessible I don't know Bob if you know of any other publicly accessible roof garden. There's a great wall of plants at the SF MoMA. They're mostly native plants there on that wall but I don't know about any more accessible ones although I see a lot when I'm high up in the city that they're starting to get planted more often now. Oh nice yeah there's one on 14 at Folsom something like that. So Doug is asking what are the other pollinators aside from bees. Yes, butterflies are pollinators hummingbirds wasps, something called surfid flies that I never knew about until I started using a naturalist gnats might bats although not here bats in Southern California the bats here eat insects the bats in Southern California are pollinators, in addition to being insect eaters. So lots of right moths flies fantastic. And thank you for asking it's fascinating to see what who pollinates what there's this very interesting plant that you would only want to have in a garden with older children because the plant is entirely poisonous. It's got a fantastic butterfly associated with it it's the Dutchman's pipe fine, and the butterfly is big and showy and they have them. They grow them at the California Academy of Sciences and have them inside the building, as well as outside the building in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco is the southern point for that. And for that plant, and for that butterfly and we're trying to restore that butterfly here in San Francisco. It is. But, but the flower is shaped like a pipe, and it is pollinated by mats. It is, it is interesting. So we have a large plant that needs some caterpillars on it right now. I'm going to turn your name into the chat, because one of my friends is looking for someplace to drop some of his extra caterpillars. Oh Bob you and I need to talk, I've got, I just got a whole bunch of caterpillars they all just went off to get into cocoons. And so I still have plenty of plant left. Excellent. Okay, good. Thank you Bob. And the other way you can do that if you don't want to share your information in the chat is to contact and these afterwards and chill forward the information to me and to Bob. Let's see. So Claudia is looking for tall plants that attract butterflies ideally not be to screen a daycare fence along a creek walkway any suggestions. Oh, very nice. We have a specific butterfly list. I love the blue elderberry. It's a, that is a wonderful plant. Stop sharing briefly. It's tall it is deciduous and so that means the leaves are going to fall. That's where's my butterfly list. I'm giving a presentation on butterfly gardening at the San Mateo Arboretum August 1 and that's a, that's a free event. Toyan and Holly leaf cherry and Morella Pacific Wax Myrnel all make great screens. Now we can Holly leaf cherry is an excellent butterfly plant out of all those. Yeah, it's wonderful, especially if you've got sandy soil and so knowing your soil would help us to make sure that your plants is tall here. Oh, oh, our native oak is amazing. Best to grow that from an acorn but if you've got the space that thing is gorgeous. So I don't know if she's looking for a tall perennials but you know, a great caterpillar plant for on the Anna swallowtail is cow parsnip. And that would grow tall but it's not really quite a screen though so it would have to be interspersed. We've got a big leaf maple that's also great for butterflies. We've got taller California lilacs the CNS there are three tree forms of that, and that is spectacular that is evergreen. It's not edible, but it's depending on which version you get either a bright blue or a medium blue flower. It's very attractive to the friendly native bees and supports over 100 different butterflies. It's a, it's a fantastic plant coffee berries a great plant evergreen do not eat the berries they will. They'll make you throw up. Redberry is a good tall evergreen plant it's related to the coffee berry bright red berries. We have them in our local park, the coffee berry. And so we have the tiny echo as their blue butterflies just beautiful. Oh, ocean spray. That's a big one. It is best for sand, got a little bit of a scent. It is, I think it just prefer sand, though. It will go to singe us. Yeah, and it's deciduous pink flower and current is deciduous. And it's the one that's got those fantastic pink chandelier like flowers in the winter and so that's that's wonderful and then it's got edible berries so it might be a great version. We've got a lot of manzanitas, some of them come in tree form the doctor heard, and then the, it's artesophilus manzanita is a tree form. And that's, I think, almost 200 different butterflies use that. So hopefully that I love the huckleberry but it just grows so slowly that I've got one that's 12 years old that I bought as a one gallon it's finally for feet. And the hazelnuts a lot of fun. Oh yeah two of those. This way you get hazelnuts, although it is deciduous it's a beautifully shaped plant and great for butterflies. And then you get the poly polyphemous moth that's really showy. So hopefully that's enough recommendations. Oh, Shannon, you're recommending the Malva Rosa. Oh, it's wonderful. And butterflies do love it and it's bright pink flowers. Thank you Shannon good, good recommendation. I have a question in the Q&A from Doug, looking for a recommendation for ground cover for sandy soil and drought tolerant that's low growing. So one of the things we've got are some on our CNPS website under the biodiversity resources is we've got our, where do I have this. And we've got a whole list of what we call, I think it's a soft landscape soft scape, because that's the word that landscapers use. So some, some great ones are of course beach strawberry is the absolute best sand, sandy soil ground cover. You put it in the middle of your driveway like I've seen people pull up, you know the middle section of the driveway and let it run inside there. It can take a little bit of pounding. So that's a great one. There's this thing called beach. It's a knot weed, K-N-O-T knot weed. And it's, it runs everywhere it has lots of little flowers. That's a really good sandy soil ground cover. There are some manzanitas that will do well with sandy soil and some seanothus as well. Yeah, Yerba Buena will do well. Beach evening primrose, the camisonia. Oh yeah, yeah right. There's Reddy Bush, there's Twin Peaks number two, San Bruno Lady, Pigeon Point. And beach evening primrose is being sold at Annie's annuals right now because I just looked that up for a friend who wanted it. So you could get that and have it shipped to you or go out to Annie's and have a fun time out there. It's a great place to spend an hour or two out in Richmond, California. There's a beautiful plant called a golden aster and there's a San Bruno mountain. So it developed on San Bruno mountain. So it's not a cultivar, it's just a garden selection that's low growing called Heterothica sessiflora bolanderia San Bruno mountain. I am going to just, and we've got some low growing sages. They're from Southern California in the East Bay, but the Salvia sonamensis, which I guess is Sonoma, the Malifera Rapens, Grassea, Point Sal, Farmer Brown, Fremont's carpet, Jade carpet. I've got all of the violets do well. Sand aster is relatively low growing. Creeping Snowberry wants full shade and sand or clay. I wouldn't have it with a kid. I have heard that the berries taste like ivory soap, which is nasty. So, but I grow the, the regular shrub just not the ground cover I've got the ground cover growing in a, in a department of public workspace right now so I'll try to put all of those in. Okay. Is it the Q&A Bob? I don't know if it'll take this much. Yeah, I don't. Just drop it in the chat they can, I'm sure they'll go up. Okay, that just went into the Q&A but I can put it in the chat as well. These are all ground covers. You'll need to check. Oh, it's not going to take this much. You will always need to check the soil. So look in CalScape. Nope, it's not taking that much either. It really doesn't want me to put this much in the chat. Also look in CalScape because it will give you a little, it'll recommend ground covers. You'll just need to double check that, that it's recommending something for sandy soil. Now that's such a good recommendation Shannon. Other questions do we have? I think maybe, yeah. Okay, so you know this is too many bees. Yeah. Claudia, with the C&O this you can, if you get one of the tree forms, take off some of the lower branches once it's bigger. And this way the bees aren't right in anybody's face but really the bees are, these are super safe. They're just really sweet. Okay, we answered all the questions. Thank you everyone for attending and for the wonderful questions. And this is going to be available on the San Francisco Public Library's YouTube channel. And I'm available through the San Francisco Public Library or through the California Native Plant Society YouTube chapter email. And we'll make sure that you have the information that you need to plant some wonderful plants for your family and for wildlife. And this way we can all change our climate and climate anxiety together. Oh geez. Yes, let's do it together. We can do it together. Susan, Bob, Rachel, thank you for being in the background, Bob and Rachel, you're always the most helpful. Thank you for leaving and library community. We'll see you again. Please attend the September. I know that one's going to be a good one. And I put the link to all of our YouTube recordings with CMPS. So we'll see you all real soon. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.