Lewis Feldman, Garden Director After much discussion, the decision has been made to close the Garden on the third Tuesday of every month, in addition to the already scheduled closure on the first Tuesday of every month, starting on January 7, 2020. Maintaining the UC Botanical Garden at a high level, requires a lot of…
UC Berkeley Facilities Services is conducting an Evacuation Support Project for Centennial Drive in December, January, February, and March. The goal is to ensure that Centennial is passable during an emergency (fire, earthquake, etc.). The Garden will be accessible either from above (along Centennial from Grizzly Peak Boulevard) or below (along Centennial Drive from the…
Dr. Lew Feldman, Garden Director Luffa sponges come from plants, instead of our default notion that sponges are animals. Luffas represent the fibrous interiors of fruits of the gourd-producing plant, Luffa aegyptiaca, a tropical member of the Cucurbitaceae that grows as an annual vine, as pictured below. When harvested at a young stage Luffa fruits…
Dr. Lew Feldman, Garden Director Next time you are in the Garden and walking past Southern African Area, stop for a moment and look for the Lampranthus, a genus of plants that have unusually large, bright flowers that appear in summer, and frequently cover the plants entirely. Lampranthus can be distinguished by the large seed…
Dr. Lew Feldman, Garden Director Undergraduate visitors to the Garden often ask me about “window” or “stone plants,” which belong to the taxonomic group known as Lithops. Students want to know, what part of the plant they are looking at, where do these plants grow and why are these plants called window or stone plant?…
Dr. Lew Feldman, Garden Director Have you ever wondered about the how and why of “holes” in leaves of plants, like Philodendron? Whereas we know quite a lot about the mechanism resulting in the holes, we are not sure of the purpose of these holes. Some workers have suggested that because Philodendron is a climbing…
Dr. Lew Feldman, Garden Director As you walk through the UC Botanical Garden and observe the diversity in form, shape, and size of plants, it is easy to conclude that plants must be made up of many different types of parts (organs). But in fact, the construction of plants is amazingly simple, consisting of only…
Holly Forbes & Jessica Parker You don’t have to be an Orchidaholic to appreciate the spectacular Peruvian native orchid, Phragmipedium kovachii, in flower for this week only at the UC Botanical Garden, in the Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous Plant House. First discovered in Peru in 2002, this new species took the orchid world by storm…
I come to this position having spent 40 years on the Berkeley faculty, first as a member of the Botany Department and later in its successor, the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. My research interests were focused on the controls for growth and development in plants, with an emphasis on root development. Along the…
Vanessa Handley, Director of Research & Collections The Garden’s magnificent public collections are its raison d’être but behind-the-scenes conservation projects are also points of great institutional pride. Conservation activities at UCBG are very diverse and include propagation in the Nursery, population monitoring at remote sites and genetic analyses in the laboratory. As befits a Garden…