I can’t do group tree tours in the pandemic era, so recently I’ve been trying something else - grabbing a box of chalk, heading to a neighborhood and chalking a tour on the sidewalk, complete with -> arrows that lead viewers from tree to tree. Last week Jason Dewees (author of Designing with Palms, with an encyclopedic knowledge of trees) and I did a fun tour of Forest Hill (it starts at the Forest Hill Clubhouse if you’re interested). This week I heard from Blake Troxel, the Presidio’s head forester, asking if I could do a Presidio tour, so this morning (4/25/20) I headed the Presidio’s Main Post to whip up a tour there.

The Presidio has some fantastic trees - it’s one of the few places in the City where there’s room for tree roots to spread out in big lawns without concrete. And I already had a tour of the Presidio from the 2nd edition of Trees of San Francisco, so this one was easy. The tour starts at the corner of Lincoln and Funston, and heads up Funston (Officer’s row), past a gorgeous Norfolk Island pine in front of the old historic Presidio hospital. The second tree, just a bit further up Funston, is a Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis). i was excited to see that little tree - it’s so young that it wasn’t around when the 2nd edition of my book came out, but it’s a tree I’ve been promoting. Wollemi pine has an amazing history - it was thought to have been extinct for millions of years, and known only from fossil records, until a hiker with some plant knowledge was bushwhacking in a narrow ravine in a park 50 miles from Sydney, Australia, and found a tree he didn’t recognize. He took some cuttings back to the scientists in Sydney, who discovered it was a “living fossil” - the 100 trees in that ravine are the only ones left in the world - somehow they made it through millions of years to survive to the present day. So kudos to the Presidio for planting this one - I hope to see many more soon!

Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) next to the historic hospital at the Presidio

From there, the tour heads up “officers row” on Funston past some beautiful former officer’s homes. The Presidio has planted some small Chilean wine palms (Jubaea chilensis) in the front yards of the homes - a great choice, and I can’t wait to see them grow - interspersed with Canary Island Palms (Phoenix canariensis).

The tour continues on Moraga Street, past an old Peruvian pepper tree, then a right down Graham Street, past some of the best cabbage palms (Cordyline australis) in the City. A bit further down I point out the “Centennial Tree”, a big blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) that was planted on the nation’s 100th birthday on July 4, 1876.

Then right on Lincoln, past a fantastic Monterey cypress, and back to the starting point. Who knows how long the chalk will last - but if you’re reading this in April 2020, head out to the Main Post to check out the tour!