The Behr Essential Botany of Early Historic San Francisco

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Speaker: Peter Baye

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.

Peter Baye is a coastal ecologist and botanist with a life-long focus on coastal beaches, dunes, tidal marshes, and lagoons, and their connections to adjacent marine and terrestrial ecosystems. His work in San Francisco included a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recovery plan for endangered plants of dunes and serpentine outcrops, shoreline and salt marsh restoration for rare plants, and vegetation management of Ocean Beach dunes. He lived and botanized in San Francisco in the 1980s-1990s, and still visits the City from his off-grid cabin in North Coast mixed redwood forest.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.