Bart O’Brien will speak about several of his larger ongoing projects as well as some of his more recent distractions. Topics will include:
• The equivalent of the CNPS Inventory for the California Floristic Province (CFP) portion of Baja California, Mexico
• An annotated checklist of the CFP of Baja California (and the recently published checklist of the entire CFP by Burge et al.)
• Publication of a full enumeration of the cultivars of the genus Arctostaphylos
• The “rediscovery” of Lupinus paynei
• What’s new at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden
• Images taken this February from Tejon Ranch and the Tumey Hills from what is widely anticipated to be the best wildflower display in many years.
Since late 2013, Bart O’Brien has been the Manager/Director of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Regional Park in the Berkeley Hills. Before moving back to northern California, he was with Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont for 24 years in a variety of positions from Director of Horticulture and Curator of the Living Collection to Director of Special Projects. He is coauthor of three books and author of numerous articles, and was co-curator of the “When They Were Wild” exhibit in 2013 at The Huntington in San Marino. He is a longtime member of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS.
The Regional Parks Botanic Garden’s spring plant sale is on Saturday, April 15. The sale is open to the public 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. (members-only sale is 9–10 a.m., and memberships may be purchased that morning). For more information about the Regional Parks Botanic Garden and its many programs, and a full listing of all the plants (quantities, container sizes, scientific names) in the sale, visit the garden’s web site at www.nativeplants.org.
