Natural History Wanderings

The Behr Essential Botany of Early Historic San Francisco

September 9, THURSDAY @ 7::30pm
Speaker:  Peter Baye, botanist/coastal ecologist
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Some of the earliest and most perceptive botanical observations and memories of Gold Rush San Francisco are the legacy of Hans Herman Behr, (1818–1904) a German medical doctor with more interest in botany, entomology, and anthropology than medicine. Behr’s first-hand observations of vanishing native San Francisco vegetation and early exotic plant introductions provide an unmatched window on the historical botany of San Francisco and the Bay Area. His published flora and “botanical reminiscences” provide clues about disjunct, rare and extinct local plant species and vegetation types that may have no close analogs today, but which may correspond with some distant coastal dune, wetland, and riparian vegetation stands north and south of San Francisco.