3. The garden. Vannoy School has a very nice garden area with a number of vegetables and flowers.

4. Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens). Incense cedars can grow to 150 feet and can live for more than 500 years. Their bark is distinctive. In young trees, it is deep red, and in mature trees, it forms a thick fibrous brown covering. Their small and sharp light green leaves are resinous cover the branches like scales. Because they do well in shade, incense cedars are common in the understory of  conifer forests.

5. Coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis). Baccharis comes from a Greek word for plants with fragrant roots, and pilularis refers to the sticky resin on its flowers. Coyote brush, a common native California plant, adapts its shape to its environment. Near the seashore, it is low to the ground. In places where it is more protected, coyote brush forms bushes. Its leaves have a waxy coating to reduce water loss, and the coating also protects them from fire. The coyote brush sends out a very large root system to find water.

6. Wet area. The playground area near the hillside is fairly wet and has influenced the kind of plants that grow there. Water in the ground affects the amount of oxygen that is available to the plants. Plants that grow in wet soil have evolved special ways to live in the wet, oxygen-poor soil. In very wet areas, such as bogs, the breakdown of dead plants is very slow. The plant material becomes part of the soil very much as it is now. So wetlands trap energy, and if water is added, the soil can be very fertile. Also note that where the ground is very wet, there are no ground squirrel mounds. They don’t like the wet ground either.

8. Blackberries. Blackberries are called adventitious because the take “advantage” of any opening in the forest. They are among the first plants to appear after a fire or other clearing. Blackberries are members of the genus Rubus, one of the most diverse genera of flowering plants with 12 subgenera and hundreds of species. They have been used for food and medicine for centuries. White or pink flowers grow at the ends of the stems. By late summer, fruit appear as aggregates of drupelets. A drupelet is a small drupe. Each is similar to a plum with a seed in the middle of the flesh and covered with a thin skin. 

  An old English legend advises that blackberries should not be eaten after Michaelmas, a celebration in late September to celebrate the defeat of the Devil by St. Michael. According to the legend, when the Devil was cast out of heaven, he landed on a blackberry plant and spit on the berries in anger, thus rendering them inedible.

9. Acacia (Acacia sp.). Acacias are in the pea family. The seed pods resemble pea pods. The leaves of acacias are compound pinnate. That means that each leaf contains a large number of smaller leaflets. There are roughly 1300 species worldwide. In the US, the tree is mostly grown as an ornamental. They are sometimes confused with locust or mimosa trees, which have similar features.

11. Row of California live oaks (Quercus agrifolia). Coast live oaks are native California trees and can grow to hundreds of years old. Its shiny green prickly leaves are usually rolled under. It tolerates dry conditions very well. A single tree can produce 500-1000 pounds of acorns each year. The acorns feed squirrels and other animals. The Native Americans of California also ground the acorns, washed out the bitter tannins, and then cooked the resulting flour.

12. Olive tree (Olea europaea). This small tree can grow for centuries. It has been valued since ancient times for its oil and fruit, which must be processed before it is edible. Each tree can produce about 2 kg of oil per year.