Saturday October 9 - 10 am to 1 pm

CA Native Plant Society Field Trip to the Pedro Point Headlands

Leaders: Jake Sigg & Mike Vasey

Co-sponsored by California Native Plant Society and Pacifica Land Trust

The 4-mile-long ridge of Montara Mountain terminates at Pedro Point, immediately south of Pacifica. It is a dramatic meeting of land and sea and atop the bluffs abruptly rising from the Pacific are headlands whose biological makeup was at least uncommon, and probably unique in its constituents. The north side of Mount Davidson in San Francisco is dominated by many of the same plants that dominate here, but the aggregation is not known elsewhere: Nootka reedgrass (Calamagrostis nutkaensis), huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), California fescue (Festuca californica), and numerous berried shrubs. The reedgrass is noteworthy: its range begins in Alaska and it hugs the coast all the way to here, which is the southern terminus of its range if you ignore a small disjunct population near Monterey. The area was abused and neglected for a long time while used as a motorcycle playground, thus resulting in deep erosion gullies. In 1992, the Pacifica Land Trust acquired title to the area and has been engaged in the slow process of arresting and binding the wounds and restoring a modicum of health. These efforts have increased recently as the result of a Coastal Conservancy-funded stewardship project that began in late 2009.

The Pedro Point Headland stewardship team will welcome ideas on how to enhance their recovery efforts and build community support for this effort.

We will meet at the Pedro Point Shopping Center on the west side of Highway 1, on San Pedro Avenue across from Ace Hardware and Castle Kitchen, and carpool from there.

Contact Jake at 415-731-3028 or jakesigg@earthlink.net for further information.