Membership Committee




From the February 2011 issue of the Bay Leaf

Please join us in welcoming our new members for the November/December 2010 time frame. Marsha Feinland, Larry Dwyer, Naomi Sorbet, John Slaymaker, Joshua Bahr, Juan Sanchez, & Jerome Myszka. As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.

Did you join CNPS prior to 1986? If you are one of the many EB Members that joined before 1986, this column is written for you. The CNPS State Office is in the process of updating the membership database and would like to have as many join dates as possible. Right now the records go back to 1986. If you are like me, you don’t remember when you joined; I just remember I have been a member since some time in the early 70’s. One suggestion is to look back on your bookshelf where you most likely keep your Fremontia and see what the oldest date is. I did that and found one from 1976 so I am guessing that is about when I joined.
If you could do that and find a date that you are comfortable with, or use other means, perhaps friends you joined with, maybe you were in school at the time? Please let me know and I will forward your information to the State Office.

Elaine Jackson, EBCNPS Membership Committee Co-Chair
elainejx@att.net, 925-372-0687


From the December 2010 issue of the Bay Leaf


Jessica Davenport on Mount Diablo, photo by Lisa Anich

 Meet Jessica Davenport

I am a California native, but I grew up on the East Coast, eventually getting a master’s degree in watershed management from the Yale School of Forestry. After two years of studying New England forests, I reveled in my recognition of dozens of native species of trees and flowers. A walk in the woods was like a party with old friends. On returning to California in 1998, however, I was faced with anonymous crowds of vegetation. On my hikes in the East Bay hills, I would be lucky to recognize even the redwood trees in Redwood Regional Park.

My obsession with learning the names of California native plants began when I became a watershed coordinator for Mount Diablo Creek in central Contra Costa County in 2005. My co-worker Carla Koop, a CNPS member, had just taken a hike up Mount Diablo and had taken pictures of all the spring wildflowers. I was impressed with the beauty of flowers and her photography, but mostly I was amazed that she knew all the names of the plants, both common and Latin. From that point on, I followed up each hike with a perusal of the wildflower field guides to try to identify what I had seen, from Mount Diablo fairy lanterns (Calochortus pulchellus) and Chinese houses (Collinsia heterophylla) to buck brush (Ceanothus cuneatus) and black sage (Salvia mellifera).

Carla encouraged me to join CNPS, and we began attending field trips, membership meetings and plant sales together, eventually becoming close friends.

While working to promote awareness and protection of Mount Diablo Creek and its watershed, particularly the portion running through the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, I met CNPS Conservation Analyst Lech Naumovich and Conservation Chair Laura Baker, who were interested in conserving plant communities there. I accompanied them and botanist Dianne Lake on a field trip to survey the base, getting to know a few more native plants, like telegraph weed (Heterotheca grandiflora), as well as these native plant enthusiasts.

In 2007, I took a job at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). This gave me the opportunity to get to know a whole new cast of native plant characters, from salt grass (Distichlis spicata) to gum plant (Grindelia stricta). I also got to meet many of my heroes in the world of wetland restoration, such as Phyllis Faber.

Although I will never learn all the names of California native plants, or get the chance to meet all the dedicated people who help to conserve and restore their habitats, I now feel surrounded by friendly faces, both plant and human. In my work at BCDC, which focuses on promoting adaptation to climate change, I look forward to doing my part to protect the incredibly beautiful and diverse natural world that we share.

New Members

Please join us in welcoming our new members for the October time frame, Mark Mendelsohn, Rachel Zimbrick, & Arielle Halpern.

As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.

Think Globally, Volunteer locally

Elaine Jackson (elianejx@att.net ~ 925-372-0687)

 

From the November 2010 Bay Leaf


Barbara Fletcher Barbour, photo by Phred Jackson

Meet Barbara Fletcher Barbour

A Childhood Memory of Miss Alice Eastwood from an Eighty-Three Year Old Perspective

I became a CNPS member sometime before I began learning to propagate with the CNPS group at Merritt College. And through that experience I began to develop a garden of primarily California native plants; in fact, many if not most of the plants in my garden are from the CNPS plant sales.

At the age of eight my family and I moved to a ranch in the hills N.E. of Sonoma, bordering on the Sonoma and Napa county line. The property had not been lived on for 9-10 years; the main house was without electricity, running water, or plumbing, and one went to the 2nd floor by an outside ladder; most of the glass windows had been shot out. At that time there were 500 acres, which through the years grew to a diversified ranch of 1,000 +/- acres. Above the canyon in which the house stood was a long wide meadow bordered by live oaks that we called “the plains”. In spring it was a palette of colors- poppies, lupines, tidy tips, Chinese houses, and of course grass (primarily non-native). There were second growth redwood groves on the banks of creeks in two canyons. When I rode my horse through the redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) the air was fragrant with azalea blooms (Rhododendron occidentale), and I loved the scent of spice bush (Calycanthus occidentalis) when I pinched the leaves or flowers. The squirrels usually beat me to the hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta). Perhaps it was from my mother’s pleasure in these and her own lovely garden that she became a long time member of CNPS. During her elder years I remember writing her annual membership checks to CNPS.

My mother’s Austrian father, Kaspar Pischel, MD (1862-1953) was not a gardener, but instead was very interested and curious in all things of the natural world, among which included a longtime membership in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Together they would ride in Golden Gate Park and later hike on Mt Tamalpais. He had gone on a camping trip in 1901 with Alice Eastwood (1859-1953), the memory of which causes me to laugh because I recall the description of this trip in the book, Alice Eastwood’s Wonderland by Carol Green Wilson. In her chapter “Into High Mountains” is the author’s humorous description of my grandfather having been burdened by his city-bred wife’s notions of the necessary (read excessive) dunnage for such a venture, a considerable part of which had to be cached for later retrieval. Evidently, Miss Eastwood “ripped open” and reduced his Alaskan-weight sleeping bag to a more manageable proportion and thus more bearable by the packhorses.

When I was about ten years old seated at my grandparents’ dinner table in Ross, Marin County, sitting across from me was their guest, Miss Alice Eastwood. I don’t remember who else may have been there or their conversation; I was much too shy to enter into that of the grown-up world. I do, however, remember being introduced to Miss Eastwood and being quite awed by her presence. Who she was or what she represented, of course, I had no way of knowing. I vaguely recall that she attempted to engage me by asking a few questions about my mother’s ranch. But most of all I remember looking through the candelabra and across the wide table covered with its customary white linen tablecloth at what appeared to me to be someone special, seemingly wise and quietly congenial with a soft smile. I now wonder what my grandmother and Miss Eastwood found to discuss. Although my grandmother was a gracious hostess she was not part of the scientific world, nor did she enjoy the more rugged outdoor activities; these were the domain of my grandfather. (In fact, flower bouquets for the house were fragrance free, not due to reasons allergenic, but I think that scent was simply too what? unmanageable? stimulating? for her Victorian childhood upbringing). Now that I think of it, Miss Eastwood must have been my grandfather’s particular guest as she was seated to his right. The conversation appeared to flow easily with some light laughter; these handsome white-haired (white-bearded in my grandfather’s case) grownups were much too well-mannered to allow uncomfortable lapses, especially in that somewhat formal albeit cordial setting.

How I wish I had been old enough to appreciate Miss Alice Eastwood for who and what she was! Or old enough to have been able to engage in or listen to the conversation with more understanding What my memory holds dear, however, is the picture of her seated across the dining room table, her kind intelligent face framed by white hair, and that visage framed by the large door-windows with the distant backdrop of the profile on the ridge of Mt.Tamalpais called “the Lady on the Mountain”.

New Members
Please join us in welcoming our new members for the September time frame, John Katko, Mark Gardner, Brian Murphy, Nancy Nagy, and Phoebe McCormick

As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.
Think Globally, Volunteer locally

We hope you all had a grand time at out Plant Fair 2010.

Elaine Jackson (elianejx@att.net, 925.372.0687)

 

Barbara Fletcher Barbour
Berkeley 2010

 


Elaine P. Jackson elainejx@mindspring.com 925-372-0687

Carol Castro carollbcastro@hotmail.com 510-352-2382