Mt Davidson Description
Mt Davidson is the highest hill in San Francisco, and the 40 acre parcel preserved in its park is one of the largest and best of our remnant natural areas. Mt Davidson’s habitat restoration workparties with the Natural Areas Program are official activities of the San Francisco Group of the Sierra Club.
Mt D’s piebald look is due to the different way that Adolph Sutro managed his piece of the hill compared to Leland Stanford. More details here.
The trees on most of Mt D capture vast quantities of fog drip, converting the understory into a rain forest where invasive English ivy, cape ivy, blackberry, and ehrharta grass predominate. Management there involves careful thinning of diseased and failing trees to open up the understory, removal of the overburden of invasive weeds, and planting coastal scrub grasses and forbs and protecting those that arise spontaneously from the remnant seed bank in the soil.
The main issue in the much drier grassland area is invasive annual grasses, though we also battle French broom and radish. Despite the invasive weeds, there is a remarkable collection of native bunchgrasses and many wildflowers still thriving in the grasslands.
The juncture between the trees and the grasslands along the north-east corner of Mt D has become one of the most important bird stopovers in the City due to the 13 different species of native berries that grow there. Unfortunately this is exactly the site where the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission planned to trench in a new water main up to the water reservoir at the top of the hill, but fortunately due to volunteer and neighborhood outcries, this plan was shifted to route the pipeline into the noncritical weedy areas under the trees. This work will happen during 2008, and we will be monitoring it closely indeed here at SF Natural Areas.
Mt Davidson currently has 167 volunteers who have subscribed to our regular email newsletters and work at this site. They have posted 51 photos and 21 posts to their blog.
Regular Workparty Schedule
- 1st Saturday of each month from 9:00 to 12:00
Regular Meeting Location
- 36 Bus Turnaround -- [Map and Details]
Additional Information
Blog Posts
Here are blog posts about the Mt Davidson project — presented 2 at a time in reverse chronological order. Browse to earlier or later posts via the pagination controls below.
Some Grassland Background
Fri, 16 May 2008, 1:45pm, Tinman said:
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The eastern flank of Mt Davidson reveals a glimpse of what all of San Francisco’s hills once looked like, back when Mt D was known as “Blue Mountain” because of its prolific grassland wildflowers each spring. Thanks to Leland Stanford’s decision not to plant his part of the hill with eucalyptus, Monterey cypress and Monterey pine the way his neighbor Adolph Sutro did, we can explore this remnant of Mt D’s complex grassland and scrub communities.
What we see today has been significantly altered, however—just not as profoundly as Sutro’s tree farm next door. For one thing, there is considerably more scrub now than when grazing cows kept the coyote bush, huckleberry, and poison oak nibbled down. More importantly, Mt D’s grasslands now are inundated by introduced weedy annual European grasses that have nearly choked out our indigenous species.
The most robust of the native grass populations on Mt D are the large stands of Pacific reed grass (Calamagrostis nutkaensis) and California fescue (Festuca californica). Both are now flowering spectacularly along the northwest margin of the grasslands, with the California fescue particularly noticeable paired with the reddish-leaved huckleberry all along the northern flank of the grasslands. This part of Mt D is the best preserved location on the hill, and in fact is one of the most pristine of the Significant Natural Resource Areas anywhere in San Francisco.
Calamagrostis nutkaensis
Festuca californica
The eastern and southern portions of Mt D’s grasslands are significantly more challenged. Small pockets of our official state grasspurple needle grass (Nasella pulchra), red fescue (Festuca rubra), blue wild rye (Elymus glaucus), June grass (Koeleria macrantha), onion grass (Melica californica and M. torreyana), California oatgrass (Danthonia califonica) and bluegrass (Poa secunda) are apparent to the discerning eye.
Much more obvious, though, are the dense swaths of weed grasses: ripgut brome (Bromus diandrus), Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), rattlesnake grass (Briza major), rattail fescue (Vulpia myuros), and wild oat (Avena barbata). These annual weeds grow extremely rapidly, dump tons of seed, and then die. Unlike the native bunch grasses that put down roots 6-10 feet into the soil and live for decades to hundreds of years, these annual weeds provide no slope stabilization nor sustenance for the local food chain.
Unfortunately, measures that control these annual weedy grasses — periodic fire and grazing — are not possible on Mt D. Native grasslands evolved with and require both for optimal health, and Mt D demonstrates what happens when human intervention interrupts these natural forces: weeds predominate. The closest approximation possible is strategically-timed mowing right when the weed grasses have flowered but before they set seed — but this is not an option since the Natural Areas Program division of the Rec&Park Department is so poorly staffed and funded that they simply cannot perform this crucial task.
Nevertheless, when you next walk through Mt D’s grasslands, take time to locate the patches of native bunch grasses and note how many more insects and birds you see where the indigenous communities are relatively intact compared to where there is merely a weedy lawn. And then write Supervisor Elsbernd, the Mayor, the Rec&Park Dept General Manager, and the Rec&Park Commission and demand that the Natural Areas Program get the funding it needs to preserve Mt D’s grasslands, our most-threatened biological communities in the City.
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More Bird News
Fri, 16 May 2008, 7:17am, Tinman said:
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From one of the most adroit of the Mt D birders:
There will undoubtedly be more reports, as there were a throng of birders up on Mt. D. this morning when I left and folks mentioned some different species. Brian F. and Andy K. were there from sunrise on, followed by Josiah C. and me, David A., and 4 or 5 other folks.
Warm morning, variable wind gusts from the NE/E/SE. Migrants were moving through in small flocks (esp. Cedar Waxwings, warblers, W. Tanagers, Lazuli Buntings), many not setting down on the hill at all, but instead flying from low level to tree top level over the hill.
Species I observed with others between 6:50-8:40 AM included (conservative estimates of individuals):
- Band-tailed Pigeon 6
- Hairy Woodpecker 1
- W. Kingbird 3 fly-overs
- Olive-sided Flycatcher 1
- W. Wood-Pewee 2-3
- Pac.-slope Flycatcher 3+
- HAMMOND’S FLYCATCHER 2 (lower Ravine)
- DUSKY FLYCATCHER 2 (Ravine, East Bramble)
- GRAY FLYCATCHER 1 (East Bramble)
- Cassin’s Vireo 1 (lower Ravine)
- Warbling Vireo 10+
- Swainson’s Thrush 3
- Warblers:
- Orange-crowned 2
- Yellow 5+
- Townsend’s 20+
- Hermit 1
- Wilson’s 20+
- W. Tanager 20+
- Bl.-headed Grosbeak 2
- Lazuli Bunting 20+
- Pine Siskin 1
- Purple Finch 1
Dragonflies: California & Blue-eyed Darners
Butterflies: W. Tiger Swallowtails
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