HAVEN FOR HAWAIIAN NATIVES
Although specializing in plants from around the world that grow in climates similar to California’s, the UC Botanical Garden in the Berkeley hills also provides safe haven for seven ferns, three palms and 11 other plants native to Hawaii, “some of them quite rare,” says curator Holly Forbes.
Among the endemic rarities are two species of Pritchardia palms (called loulu in Hawaiian), the shrub Brighamia insignis (nicknamed “cabbage on a stick”) and a mint from Molokai said to have fewer than 10 plants in the wild. Most, but not all, are on public display, in the Tropical House and the Pacific Islands section of the Australasian Area, while the rest reside in off-limits greenhouses, according to Forbes.
But those are just a small fraction of the garden’s gems, director Paul Licht is quick to note.
“We have the biggest native California plant collection — 28 percent of all native California plants, roughly 1,600 different kinds out of the 5,600 recognized — and 12,000 different kinds of plants from around the world,” he says. “We’re on a different order of magnitude” than the National Tropical Botanical Garden, which Licht nonetheless calls “very beautiful.”
Another point of pride for Licht: the garden’s currently blooming Puya raimondii, an endangered plant known as Queen of the Andes, 28 feet tall and about 24 years old. In the wild, they don’t bloom until 80 or more years old, he says.
As on Kauai, the Berkeley botanical garden has recently become “much more user- friendly,” Licht says. “We've installed a lot of interpretive signage to help the visitors, we've improved the paths.”
On Oct. 28, the garden’s patrons will celebrate the installation of a 1911 Julia Morgan building, relocated from the campus below, that will host garden club meet- ings and weddings — a natural for such a scenic setting. “We are the only botanical garden with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge,” Licht notes.