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The Trees of Golden Gate Park and San Francisco

Elizabeth McClintock
Edited and Arranged by Richard G. Turner, Jr.

150 pages (8.5 x 11), with b&w drawings, color plates, maps, index, bibliography
Trade paper, ISBN: 1-890771-28-7, $18.95

Published in Conjunction with the Pacific Horticultural Foundation

A little more than a hundred years ago, the San Francisco landscape was mostly sand dunes, meadows, marshes, and rocky outcroppings. Only a scattering of native trees, mostly windblown and stunted, grew naturally. Early city and park planners, bent on creating a magnificent city, transformed this sparse, fog-swept landscape by planting trees from around the world—trees selected especially for their beauty and adaptability to the city’s climate.

The Trees of Golden Gate Park is based on the writings of botanist Elizabeth McClintock, whose column on the trees of Golden Gate Park was a feature of Pacific Horticulture magazine for twenty-five years; it presents the reader with the stories of 170 different trees found in the park and throughout the city. Detailed maps and elegant line drawings of leaves, flowers, and fruit make it a useful field guide; extensive descriptions of the biology, lineage, and horticultural history of the trees make it essential armchair reading for everyone who wishes to deepen their knowledge of San Francisco and the unique urban treasure known as Golden Gate Park.

Reviews:

Marin Independent Journal

Trees of Golden Gate Park stand in the spotlight

Strybing Arboretum & Botanical Gardens invites Marin tree lovers to take a walk through their gardens and learn about the trees of Golden Gate Park with docent Joanne Taylor and Richard Turner Jr., editor of Pacific Horticulture magazine, on Saturday, Sept. 29, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The tour costs $8 for non-members of Strybing.

There is a tremendous variety of trees from many parts of the world at Strybing and many have interesting psts, such as the dacrydium that was brought to the park after its debut at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Other trees include magnolias, cedars, tree dahlias, dove tree, gingkos, and the coast, giant and dawn redwoods.

Turner recently edited the new guidebook ìTrees of Golden Gate parkî (Heyday Press), written by dr. Elizabeth McClintock whom Strybing considers ìone of Californiaís foremost botanists and a mentor to those working in the fields of taxonomy, biological research and public education.î

Now almost 90 ad retired in Sonoma, McClintock based her book ìTrees of Golden Gate Parkî on 25 years of columns in Pacific Horticulture magazine. The book, sprinkled with a collection of quotes, gives historical, botanical and anecdotal accounts of 170 Golden Gate Park trees, with maps to locate them.

McClintock concentrated her career on the botany of plants used in California. This past June she received the Veitch Gold Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain, its highest award to a non-British citizen, in honor of her work. Profits from the book will go to the Elizabeth McClintock Fund for trees, supporting the ongoing management of trees in Golden Gate Park.

Author Biographies:

Dr. Elizabeth McClintock's botanical career has spanned more than fifty years. Specializing in the classification, naming, and geographical distribution of plants, she is considered an expert in the field. She continues to work as a research associate in the Jepson Herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley.

Richard G. Turner, Jr. is the editor of Pacific Horticulture, one of the country's top garden magazines. Throughout his distinguished career, he has been a garden designer, educator, writer, photographer, and botanical tour leader.