A tree planting at our August community workday

Our newly planted Kauri Pine

The mature Kauri Pine

Among all the introduced trees seen in the parks of San Francisco, the Queensland Kauri Pine (Agathis robusta) is one of the less common. Kauri Pines have leathery, evergreen leaves, and grow very tall. Like the more commonly seen Norfolk Island Pine, the Queensland Kauri Pine is in the auricariaceae family. The Panhandle has one mature Kauri Pine - located near Cole Street. Nearby are two young Kauri Pines planted in recent years, and now, there's a third, planted just this weekend by the Panhandle Park Stewards under the supervision of SF Rec and Park gardening staff.

In addition to volunteers from the community, the SF Bridgemen joined the work group on Saturday, helping with the other projects of the morning: cutting back sucker growth from the elms and redwoods, raking and pulling weeds, and trimming a few of the large shrubs found near Lyon Street on the south side of the park.

Thank you Bridgemen for your work on Saturday! 

There's an old salvia in here somewhere....

January workday report; playground project launching this month

Community volunteers gathered last week, on a sunny Saturday morning, to work with our park gardener. We scooped up mountains of eucalyptus bark and branches that have fallen in the recent stormy weather. We also removed weeds (& broken glass) from the rain garden. At the end of the program, we gathered for this snapshot, taking a minute to remember the projects over the past several years that have improved the area around the playground. 

Red-flowering currant is one of the California native perennials that flourished next to the playground. Enjoy their final blooms this weekend before the heavy equipment arrives! 

Big changes are coming to these areas (in the left half of the picture above) as part of the playground project. Starting this coming Tuesday, Jan 22, crews will perform tree work on eucalyptus, cypress, and elms around the Panhandle Playground. Further details are at the department's project webpage.

June workday report

The workday on Saturday, June 10 brought out regular volunteers and some new folks as well, to work on keeping the Panhandle beautiful. After a thorough weeding of the rain garden, we turned to pruning basal shoots and root sprouts (suckers) produced by the large elm trees near the playground. We continued with our loppers towards the east, making it all the way to Baker Street, clearing basal shoots around more trees and also some pruning back some shrubs that had begun to intrude on the multi-use pathway.

Get out and enjoy the additional clearance on the path

October Workday Report

During yesterday's community workday at the Panhandle, neighbors split into two separate groups to take on projects at the east end and at the center of the park.

Panorama of the redwoods at the east end

In the eastern end near Baker Street, we spread a large mound of woodchips as mulch around the redwood trees, to protect the shallow roots, prevent soil compaction and conserve water. This beautiful grove of trees is ours to enjoy, so if you want to beat today's heat, take a walk beneath the canopy of the redwoods around the McKinley Monument.

Jogging under the redwoods

 

The other group tackled end-of-summer maintenance of the flowers and perennials that grow around the playground and in our rain garden, near Ashbury. The spent blooms were removed to make room for fresh starts that will come with the rains this fall and winter.

After promoting the Panhandle Park workdays for nearly six years, I feel very happy to have increasing support from the neighbors who take part in our community workdays - one time, dozens of times, or somewhere in between. Having sufficient numbers to split into two groups and take on a variety of projects in cooperation with the Rec and Park staff is also a huge mark of success.

As the drought continues,  portions of the park are growing increasingly bare of grass. However, big portions of our meadows remain green and welcoming. Meanwhile, the elms have sprouted abundant new leaves in the last month, despite my worries that the changing climate was having severe effects on them. The timing is a little odd, since we are also beginning to see fall color foliage on other trees.

Elms

Early fall color

Barer and barer

What's the matter with the Panhandle's elm trees?

Many of the Panhandle's elm trees have very little foliage, despite having reached the middle of the summer season. For park users, this is a loss, both for the lack of shade beneath the trees, and also because we will miss out on the seasonal leaf change of the elms, our park's main source of autumn colours. 

Elm trees on Saturday, August 1, with few leaves

Some of the elm trees in the park have a good amount of leaves, such as the one pictured below located near the intersection of Fell @ Lyon, but the greater number of them are quite bare. 

What accounts for this unusual phenomenon? One might suspect the prolonged drought, but the Panhandle is irrigated. Also, a local tree expert explained a more compelling theory: the warm local weather of the last year, in particular, the few nights this winter with cold temperatures, caused the tree's reaction. Their physiology is confused and they don't know whether or when to foliate. The elm trees in the Panhandle were brought from colder climates more typical of the eastern United States. 

image from The California Weather Blog

It's unclear why a few elm trees have normal leaf growth while the majority are bare, but there could be micro-climates at work, or perhaps it's related to aspects of the tree such as age or gender (and it might be a different species altogether - I am not really certain). A more ominous question is how many seasons like this one can a tree tolerate before it just gives up? More research into phenology and climate change is needed in order to understand what's happening in our parks and wildlands.

Fall color - a thing of the past? Picture from 12/2/2011

Park workers busy during break in the storm

Thank you Guillermo for clearing our pathways this morning during the break in the storm!

Yesterday's Pineapple Express storm brought San Francisco a couple inches of rain and a lot of wind, bringing down a mess of branches out of the mature trees in the Panhandle. Getting the branches off the paths helps everyone navigate more safely, a nice benefit given today's mild weather.

The winds also split an old elm tree located near Central Ave on the Oak Street side. The limbs have already been cut and removed, but removing the trunk will probably require another crew.

Split in the tree, tagged #259

Another view of the split tree

Park entrances at Oak & Ashbury: one rebuilt and one still in progress

January workday pictures

Rain was in the forecast yesterday, and so many of us showed up for the community workday in our rubber boots. The rain held off until the afternoon, but the boots were perfect for working in the damp and muddy Panhandle park. A big group of volunteers set to work with the park's gardener, Guillermo. 

Our main task yesterday involved raking up leaves in the area Lyon and Central next to the south path. Many of these were big elm trees, and we also worked through the grove of pittosporum.

Leaving a pile of leaves around the base of the tree creates a nice blanket to protect roots and also suppresses weeds. The leaves of most trees (eucalyptus excepted) will decompose pretty quickly. Each year we've been able to assist the other park workers in bringing this improvement to more parts of the park.   

Another group of volunteers trimmed back burl growth from the redwoods at Baker Street. 

Meanwhile, graffiti was removed from the McKinley Memorial by city workers on Friday. 

June workday and progress in the Panhandle's central area

Thanks to 12 volunteers for being part of our workday. Here's the crew remaining at the end of the morning.

Volunteers planted a whole lot of new plants near the playground yesterday during our Saturday workday in the Panhandle: marigolds and cosmos around the south side of the gardener's shack and a dozen larger perennials for the plot on the east side of the shed.

Spreading the mulch around outside the playground

And there's more! A load of compost fines and a heap of mulch was ready for Stage 1 of a big new project: prepping the sandy & weedy area outside the playground gates for planting. This spot has a big eucalyptus and two other trees, and the leaf litter and shade make for a less than ideal growing environment. After a few months of allowing the compost fines and mulch to settle in (pardon my lack of biotechnical knowledge), we'll bring some hardy plants that are appropriate for this spot - for example, short stature (to not block views in and out of playground). 

I was amazed that our dozen volunteers succeeded in the laborious work of moving and spreading the compost and mulch around the entire area. Another volunteer was also busy trimming elm suckers and a hedge on the side of the playground that is forever growing too high. We even had time at the end for a concentrated effort to remove weeds that continue to pop up in the new rain garden. The morning's work was running, so Guillermo was able to take time to get out the leaf-blower and clean the asphalt area for a Silent Frisco dance party that was about to start up.  

Thanks to the Golden Gate Park Nursery for providing our new plants, to our regular and first-time volunteers, and to our gardener Guillermo. 

Conium, ranunculus repens, Senecio Elegans, begone!

December panhandle workday is tomorrow!

Please join us in the Panhandle, tomorrow, Dec 10 for our monthly workday. We'll gather at 9am.

Tree vs. Tree near Oak/Lyon

Rec & Park cleans up the aftermath

Passing through the Panhandle Tuesday morning, I found a Rec and Park crew removing a fallen tree near Lyon and Oak. A large branch from a eucalyptus tree was on the ground, and I also saw the stump of a different tree - what looked like an elm.

Where the branch dropped from

The crew confirmed that a branch from a eucalyptus had fallen and crushed an old elm tree.

paper for scale - not a young tree

The crew said they had noticed the fallen tree Monday afternoon at about 1:30 p.m., which was another rainy day (0.06 of an inch). The falling branch had also damaged the small, young elm nearby, but it survived. Fortunately there are three other, mature elms in that vicinity of the Panhandle.

Seen from a distance, the eucalyptus that dropped a limb is HUGE. Many of the large trees in the Panhandle are over a hundred years old.