2 - Plants of Lands End

Transcription of accompanying audio.
Woman's Voice. 

This is stop 2.

This is a panel called: Plants of Lands End: What Grows Here? Putting Down Roots.

Beneath this title is a large color photo of a shoulder of hillside covered with white wildflowers and green grasses. The hillside drops down to white waves lapping a rocky shore. The sky above is streaked with clouds. 

Though Lands End has a wild side, it is also a surprisingly urbanized landscape, a complex mixture of native vegetation and imported, non-native trees and plants. An environment of dense fog, westerly winds off the Pacific, and blowing sea spray has created a system of native, salt-tolerant, low-growing plants well adapted to their setting.

Aside from the willows, most of these headlands were essentially treeless until the 1930s, when Depression-era landscaping created an artificial urban forest of pine, cypress, and eucalyptus trees. These non-native species, which adjusted rapidly to the marine environment, soon expanded beyond their original boundaries and crowded out many of the native plants and grasses.

National Park Service policies call for the preservation of both the area's natural and historic legacies, and habitats with native species as well as introduced vegetation are now protected.

Rehabilitation efforts include limiting the spread of the non-native pine, eucalyptus, and cypress forests; thinning stands of trees to create meadow areas; and replanting native species.

At the bottom of the panel are nine color images of native species. They include toyon, Douglas Iris, seaside daisy, silver bush lupine, San Francisco wallflower, Ithuriel's spear; California poppies, cobweb thistle, and California blackberry.

Face the panel you just heard about, then turn left and walk straight ahead. You'll pass another cement doorway, smaller this time. Walk right past it. Just on the other side, you'll find another large panel attached to the wall. That's our stop.