Natives Thrive in California

New Zealand native plants and trees are thriving in San Francisco with both the San Francisco and University of California botanical gardens boasting impressive specimens of rimu, kauri and others. “One has even become an iconic San Francisco street tree: the New Zealand Christmas tree, Metrosideros excelsa, pohutukawa to the Maori, with its red bottlebrush flowers and beards of aerial roots,” Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan write in the San Francisco Gate. “Among the shrubs, the hebes [pictured] are standouts. With more than 100 species, these are to New Zealand’s flora what manzanitas and ceanothus are to ours.”