EVENTS QUEUED UP FOR NATIVE PLANT WEEK
San Diego chapter offers field trip, expert garden tips, virtual tours through April 24
As the gardening boom continues, interest in California native plants is on the upswing among those looking to conserve water, attract pollinators and beautify their spaces with resilient plants.
They’ll get a hand from the San Diego chapter of the California Native Plant Society, which is hosting a week’s worth of virtual events in honor of California Native Plant Week, April 16-24.
The annual commemoration had its start in 2010, when the state Legislature voted to designate the third week of April as California Native Plant Week. Since then, the society’s 35 local chapters have planned events each year, including botanical field trips, wildflower shows, garden tours and educational talks.
Despite the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, the San Diego chapter is presenting its biggest celebration yet in 2021, with an event offered each day. In addition to a live field trip, online options will introduce viewers to a variety of local activities, including garden tours, rare plant conservation, and propagation. Guest speakers will include representatives from the San Diego Natural History Museum Canyoneers and the San Diego Botanic Garden.
The California Native Plant Society works to increase understanding of native plants and to preserve them in their natural habitat through scientific activities, education, conservation and restoration. The San Diego chapter, which serves San Diego and Imperial counties, invites new members to learn more about the flora of the state and meet people who share a common interest in native plants. For general questions about native plants or the chapter, email to info@cnpssd.org.
For the San Diego chapter, daily events during California Native Plant Week are as follows; registration is required:
• April 16 webinar (this event was recorded and is accessible online at the CNPS-SD site): Jim Varnell of the Canyoneer training team and Diana Lindsay, author, discuss using “Coast to Cactus: The Canyoneer Trail Guide to San Diego Outdoors” as a field guide. Varnell and Lindsay, editors for “Coast to Cactus,” discuss using the book as it was designed: to teach appreciation and understanding of the great biodiversity found in San Diego County.
• Today guided walk, 9 a.m.: Chapter vice president and field trips chair Justin Daniel will lead a botanic walk at Barnett Ranch County Preserve in Ramona that will focus on floral foundations of the food web and emphasize wildlife commonly seen in the area.
The walk will follow COVID-19 safety guidelines.
• Sunday Facebook Live interview, 10 a.m.: Judie Lincer, native garden committee co-chair and longtime garden tour director, will lead viewers through her California native plant garden to explain how she created it and what she found along the way.
• Monday online meeting, 7 p.m.: Bring your creative side to a contest to help the chapter name its new mascot, a Dudleya pulverulenta, and create a slogan for it as part of the CNPS Dudleya Protection campaign.
• Tuesday webinar, 7 p.m.: Tony Gurnoe, director of conservation horticulture at the San Diego Botanic
Garden, will talk about “A New Era of Plant Conservation” at the garden, which is dramatically elevating its conservation and research programs. Learn about its long-term conservation storage in seed bank projects and how it is reintroducing and reinforcing threatened populations of plant species.
• Wednesday online meeting, 11 a.m.: Amy Huie, the chapter’s propagation committee chair, will talk about propagation of narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) from seed and rhizome cuttings.
• Thursday webinar, 7 p.m.: Native plant gardener Don Rideout will present a virtual tour of his garden, arranged in five sections
representing different geographic and habitat zones: Baja, San Diego Chaparral, Channel Islands, Pond and Shade.
• Friday online live lesson, 10 a.m.: Become a community scientist! Hosted by the San Diego Museum of Natural History, this short lesson explains how to use iNaturalist to record observations of plants and wildlife that you see in nature.
• April 24 recorded presentation, 10 a.m.: Get a “360 Virtual Native Garden Tour” from the San Diego chapter’s native garden committee. Follow this self-guided virtual tour of five gardens in East County, click on areas to learn about the plants, and see beforeand-after photos.