This slideshow takes us to Strybing Arboretum’s (SF Botanical Garden’s) Mesoamerica collection of cloud forest plants. Cloud forests are super diverse forests in the tropics found at around three to eight thousand feet in elevation. Average rainfall is say around 80″ a year, so pretty wet and drippy. We show you some of the choice selected horticultural specimens and introduce you to the collectors and growers who made it happen. Then we make our way down to Chiapas to meet the land, the people, the weather, and some representative families or genera like Salvias, melastomes, rubiaceous shrubs, passiflora vines, oaks, magnols, epiphyllums, and more. We hop in a volkswagen and then drive over to the drier pine oak agave communities. Then we make a profound jump from the more Mayan Chiapas to the more Nahual Aztecs and engage with the history of plant lore and profusion of entheogenic plants in the Americas. We end with a couple of plant masters exploring the cloud forests of Southeast Asia (that is up in the hills of Bornea, Malaysia, Indo Kalimantan) and their tales of collecting and growing these groups of epic and colossal, fantastagormic, chiiliquacious plants that seem to love San Francisco and our particular geography and climate. And the hummingbirds seem to feel the same way about our location and plant selections too.
Mission Azul 