dragoness_e | San Francisco Botanical Gardens, part 1: Primitive Plant Garden

The San Francisco Botanical Gardens are quite large; I was only able to see part of them, as it was well on in the afternoon when I started. I entered via the "Friend Gate", across the road from the Japanese Tea Garden that I couldn't enter. The entrance area is Australian flora; there's a nice map near the gate showing the layout of the gardens.

Map of the Botanical Gardens

Just past the map is a meadow with duckpond. The meadow is full of picnickers and waterfowl; the duckpond is full of ducks, geese, coots and the occasional heron.

Meadow and duckpond

One of the first things on the map that caught my eye was the Primitive Plant Garden. I decided to see that and the California section, because I wanted to find out what some of the peculiarly western trees and plants were that I'd been seeing. That, and I'm a sucker for Carboniferous vegetation.

Entrance to Primitive Plant Garden

Map of Primitive Plant Garden

Primitive plants include things like algae, lichen, liverworts, moss, ferns, tree ferns, horsetails, gingkos, early flowering plants, conifers, certain palms... There are lots of pictures of tree ferns here.

Pineapple Palm

Black Tree Fern

More Tree Ferns

Tree Fern with Fiddleheads

This is not a close-up. They really are as big as they look. The curled fiddleheads are about as wide across as my spread hand.

Tasmanian Tree Ferns