Why Natives? • Native Plant Gallery • Native Plant Bike Tour • Native Plants in Residential Designs • Native Plant Nurseries

Native Plant Gallery

Beach/Dune Strawberry
Fragraria Chiloensis
Rose Family

The Beach or Dune Strawberry is a useful native ground cover from the dune plant community. In its natural, coastal environment, it helps to stabilize shifting sand dunes. Beach strawberries send out runners that root and then send out more runners, eventually making a web of sorts, holding the sand together and allowing other plants to establish.

A distant relative of the rose, its berries are edible, but not quite as tasty as the typical hybrid strawberries most people are familiar with.

In residential designs, beach strawberry thrives with moderate irrigation and sandy soil, often forming a thick mat of rounded green leaves, white flowers and green to red berries. The plant is a perfect choice for homes near the coast that get heavy wind and fog.

Celeveland Sage
Salvia clevelandii

Cleveland sage is a very aromatic, large sage, from the chaparral and coastal scrub plant groups with purple flowers and grey-green leaves. It needs good drainage, sun and minimal water and can grow to be more than eight feet wide.

This plant is good for filling sunny, open areas and blooms spring to late fall. Its flowers are particularly distinctive and look like little lavender space stations. Its fragrance can be quite intense, even overbearing to some noses. It attracts a variety of insects and its dense foliage is sometimes used as a nesting space by birds

Sticky Yellow Monkey Flower
Mimulus Aurantiacus

Sticky yellow monkey-flower, or monkey-bush, is another fine chaparral choice for San Francisco. It needs good drainage, sun and minimal water. Its yellow to orange flowers are attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds.

Native population monkey flower bushes can be found thriving in the Marin Headlands and in restoration projects within the Presidio such as the Mountain Lake restoration project. There are some 40 or so species native to California and approximately 150 related species world-wide. Some other species and commercially available hybrids have pink and purple flowers.

The local variety can be found from southern Oregon down the coast of California.

Matilija Poppy
Romneya coulteri
Papaveraceae

Matilija poppy is another good chaparral/coastal scrub choice for San Francisco with its big white flowers that look like sunny-side up eggs. Like Cleveland Sage it needs good drainage and open sunny space, and gets to be rather large, sometimes growing more than eight feet tall. It requires minimal water and can spread rapidly.

Matilija poppy has some interesting medicinal properties as an astringent to treat minor skin afflictions and even as an ingredient in mouthwash. It is found along the west coast from Baja Mexico to Santa Barbara and its blooms attract a variety of birds and insects.

silver lupine, {blah blah blah blah}

yellow lupine, {blah blah blah blah}

indian paintbrush, {blah blah blah blah}