Our City Forest Joins the iNaturalist Community

At dawn, mist settles low across our arboretum at Martial Cottle Park. Everything is washed in tones of pink and blue as the sun rises to the chorus of the birds. The crepuscular coyote tracks down the gophers and squirrels whose tunnels network through soil where the beetle grubs sleep in tight curls.

Anyone that has spent an extended period of time at our Community Nursery or Urban Forestry Education Center (UFEC) knows that a variety of wildlife can be found living in our gardens and trees. As we expand our gardens and as they mature into their larger forms, we hope to see a growth in biodiversity as well. Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is the variety of life forms in a specific area. The size of this area where biodiversity can be measured varies widely and depends on the needs of the person who is doing the measuring. You can measure the biodiversity found in 1 square foot of soil or an entire ecosystem. In our case, we are trying to measure the biodiversity at our Community Nursery and Urban Forestry Education Center, both of which are approximately 2 acres. And we need your help to document this information through iNaturalist! 

What is iNaturalist?

iNaturalist is a nonprofit social network and database that connects community scientists, naturalists, and other scientists from around the world to document observations of the biological world. These observations are documented through pictures, audio recordings, and data such as an organism’s sex, life stage, your own written notes and details, and much more. The app and website have a multitude of features such as AI assistance in species identification, creating projects for a variety of purposes, and keeping project journals to keep in touch with a project’s community.

iNaturalist has led to the discovery of new species and unprecedented amounts of biodiversity have been discovered in urban environments, such as three researchers who documented over 1,000 species in their home and backyard. Like these researchers, scientists around the world use many observations of the observations uploaded to iNaturalist for their own research and even use iNaturalist as the platform for their projects. This not only allows community members of all backgrounds to participate in the scientific process but also connects people to their environment and to each other. 

While iNaturalist can be used for a wide variety of projects, there are a few things that iNaturalist is not intended for, such as:

• Documenting domestic animals and cultivated plants. There may be some specific exceptions to this rule but these exceptions must have a specific purpose to upload observations of domestics and cultivars. An example would be that you are creating a project intended to document and study interactions between domestic animals or cultivated plants and wildlife.

• Observations of humans. iNaturalist is not intended for uploading pictures of people.

• Abiotic observations. iNaturalist is made for documenting and observing living organisms (biotic), not the abiotic sphere which includes things such as rocks and minerals. Abiotic observations can be noted and pictured when it is relevant to the context of the organism that is being focused on. For example, if you are documenting a California Poppy and you observe that it is growing in serpentine soil, that is very important key information that tells us a lot about that plant and its natural history.

Image sourced from U.S Forest Service

Our City Forest’s Projects

As of March 2024, our two new projects already have 122 documented species between our Community Nursery and Education Center, including:

• Coyotes (Canis latrans)

• California Ground Squirrels (Otospermophilus beecheyi)

• Fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus)

• Pacific Gopher snakes (Pituophis catenifer catenifer)

• Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna)

• Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias)

• Great Egret (Ardea Alba)

• Paradise Jumping spiders (Habronattus sp.)

• Wolf spiders (family Lycosidae)

• Bird’s Nest Fungi (family Nidulariaceae)

Great Blue Heron (Ardea Herodias). Image sourced from Great Ecology.

Common Bird’s Nest Fungus (Crucibulum laeve). © randomtruth, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA)

What is a BioBlitz?

A BioBlitz is a community effort to document and identify species diversity in a specific location and sometimes within a certain time period such as a single event that takes place over a few hours. These events are held around the world by community leaders, non-profits, and other institutions.

A BioBlitz hosted by Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful. Image sourced from Open Space Authority.

Currently, we have two BioBlitz projects, one at our Community Nursery and the other at our Urban Forestry Education Center. These projects are location bound, but not time bound meaning that any observation recorded within our plots at any point in time will automatically be added to our projects page. In the future, we may host BioBlitz events to more intensively document the biodiversity at our plots but for the moment anyone can visit either our Nursery and Education Center during open hours and make observations.

BioBlitz at Our City Forest's Community Nursery

The goal of this project is to document the wildlife that comes to our various gardens, specifically pollinators and birds. While a large amount of the trees and shrubs that are at our nursery get sold and taken to a new home, our nursery also has a collection of permanent gardens that feature primarily California native plants as well as some non-native drought tolerant species we hope will attract more wild pollinators and not just our own bees from our hives.

BioBlitz at Our City Forest's Urban Forestry Education Center

The long-term vision for our Education Center is to create more demonstration and education-based gardens such as a native pocket forest and plant an understory in our arboretum. Our arboretum features many species of trees, both native and non-native, and in 20 years when they have all matured the arboretum will be mostly shaded. At the moment, the spaces in between the trees are taken over every year by fast growing invasive grasses that reproduce before we have the chance to remove them. Our goal is to plant more native shrubs, grasses, perennials, and annuals that can outcompete these invasive weeds and provide a wealth of diversity that will attract wildlife such as pollinators, songbirds, raptors, and reptiles as well as non-animal species such as lichens and fungi! As we move towards this goal and our gardens expand and mature, we want to document the biodiversity and hopefully see an increase in the amount of species we encounter.

How Can I Learn More About iNaturalist?

If you have never used iNaturalist, you can download the app onto your phone. While the app is great for uploading observations on the go, the website is best for navigating projects, discovering new observations, making identifications for other users, reading journals, reading species profiles, and much more!

For more in-depth information, we highly recommend the iNaturalist trainings created by our community partner Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful (KCCB). KCCB hosts regular webinars about iNaturalist as well as Naturalist Trainings for community members and naturalists looking to continue learning about the natural world. They also host monthly BioBlitz events for those who want to get out into nature!

Recorded iNaturalist Trainings:

7/19/23: Naturalist Training - Community Science & Introduction to iNaturalist

8/23/23: A Deeper Dive into iNaturalist webinar

Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful BioBlitz at Alum Rock Park. Image sourced from Open Space Authority.

Bare Roots: Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a bare root tree?
A bare root tree is a tree that is harvested from the ground for the purpose of transporting it so that it can then be either re-planted or potted. For our purposes at the nursery, the bare root trees that get shipped in will be planted into 15 gallon pots.

Q: How many trees do we receive for bare roots?
For the past few bare root seasons, we have received anywhere from 1200-1500 bare root trees. For the 2020 season, the exact count will be 1481! In anticipation of this large delivery, considerable time and volunteer hours have been dedicated to rearranging the trees already at the nursery in order to make room for the new ones. Despite the ample amount of new trees, our hope is to incorporate them into the nursery as smoothly as possible.

Q: Where do the bare root trees come from? How far of a distance do they travel?The trees come from J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co., a wholesale nursery located in Canby, Oregon. The distance between San Jose and J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. is about 645 miles. You can learn more about the nursery, which distributes a significant percentage of its deciduous trees to nurseries throughout western North America and Canada, here. In order to preserve the roots, the trees are bundled in twine and transported in a refrigerated truck. The same truck also stores several other bundles of bare roots to be distributed elsewhere. This may be hard to imagine considering our delivery alone consists of almost 1,600 trees, but the trees are so efficiently bundled that several deliveries can be made in one trip! Once the trees are successfully delivered, they can either be transplanted into 15-gallon pots or planted directly into the ground. Orchards often utilize bare root trees, in part because they are convenient, efficient and economical to transport. For our purposes at Our City Forest, considering the eventual goal is to sell these trees to residents, the bare root trees will be transplanted into 15-gallon pots.

Q: Are there particular types or species of trees that fare better through the bare root process (which includes harvesting, transporting, waiting and finally, transplanting) than others?
As far as the bare roots operation goes at OCF, our team only works with deciduous trees. This is because in order to be harvested from the ground and transferred hundreds of miles away and still survive, the trees must be dormant. The bare roots season happens when it does (mid-February to early March) in order to time planting with the dormant season. This year planting is set to start on February 21st.

Q: What kind of conditions do the trees require prior to being transplanted?
Before the arrival of the 1481 trees coming in this year, a trench will be built for the purpose of keeping the trees moist and cool--and therefore alive. The trench can be pictured as something like this: A long, raised pile of well-mixed soil amendment and mulch with a channel carved directly through the middle. The trees will then be propped into the trench, roots on the downside, and the exposed roots will be subsequently covered with the surrounding mulch-soil mix. Assuming it gets watered regularly (two times a day), the trench will serve as a temporary holding space that will protect and maintain the roots of the trees until it is their time to be potted. Provision of wet and cool conditions for the roots in the time between delivery and transplanting is crucial for the trees’ chance of a smooth transition and proper development. Dry roots on the other hand lead to decreased survivability.

Q: Why are the bare root trees we receive in February so important for the nursery?
The bare roots inflow makes up a huge percentage of the nursery tree stock.  Bare roots also allows for a more diverse stock. The nursery typically orders 20-30 different species of deciduous trees; this year we will be working with 27 different species! A primary goal of the nursery, and OCF as a whole, is to practice and promote diversity in urban forestry. Because the nursery supplies its stock with environmental health in mind, and therefore an effort to evade monoculture whilst promoting diversity, receiving a wide variety of bare root trees helps to support the OCF mission. The way in which bare roots is approached at OCF embraces, and therefore helps to advance, the reality that diverse forests--and ecosystems in general--embody longevity, health and beauty. Having said this, variety in species makes it possible to plant trees in a way that will enhance the biodiversity of the urban forest. The bare roots season is also important because it represents and encourages community involvement, building new connections, and educating about why the urban forest is a special part of our everyday lives.

 Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of bare root trees?
Bare root trees are an economical and efficient way to stock the nursery. Buying trees as bare roots as opposed to already-potted trees from other nurseries is more cost-effective, especially taking into account the amount of trees we receive during bare roots. Transplanting bare root trees is efficient because these trees are much easier to transport and store than potted trees. The bare root plantings also allow for the team, and the volunteers learning from the team, to take special and specific care of each tree that they transplant (i.e. as opposed to a tree that is donated or sold to us from another nursery). In terms of disadvantages, one is that the timeline for growth can be challenging. For example, the maple, zelkova and elm tree species are typically ready to be planted about three to four months after they are potted. Ginkgo and linden trees, conversely, take longer (about 6 months) to root. This difference in development among species can cause inconvenience because certain species may not coincide with demand. Another disadvantage is that the process does not include a single evergreen tree, so the evergreen population must be supplemented from other sources.

Q: How well have the bare root trees from last year grown and developed thus far?
The survival rate among last year’s bare root stock is 95 percent. As of now, these trees are healthily rooted and ready to be planted! 

Q: What role do volunteers play in the bare roots process?
During the bare roots rush, volunteer recruitment efforts at the nursery are more important than ever! This is because there is such a large number of trees to transplant, and the OCF team can use as much help as it can get. Because of this, bare roots implements two volunteer shifts per day--one in the morning and one in the afternoon. As we are a community nursery, anyone looking for a meaningful way to help their environment is welcome to participate!

Q: How does bare roots strengthen community engagement and learning?
Bare roots is a perfect opportunity to build upon the interrelations of our San Jose community in a way that provides insight into what it takes to grow high quality trees. During bare roots, all kinds of people come together for a common cause--from corporate groups, to students, to families and friends. The aspect of community participation in bare roots is also so exciting because the same volunteers who help transplant the trees will have the opportunity later on to plant the same trees throughout their city!

History of Our City Forest’s Community Nursery, Part 1

Our City Forest’s Community Nursery and Training Center is situated on two acres near Mineta San Jose International Airport.  It is home to some 2,350 young trees and 6,300 shrubs, nearly all of which were cultivated on site. The trees alone fill 38 rows spread across two large sections or ‘banks.’ In addition to its stock of plants, the Nursery keeps on hand sufficient planting materials and equipment to conduct regular community plantings of dozens of trees at a time. The Nursery also serves as a training site for AmeriCorps service members, Tree Amigos, tree stewards, and other community volunteers.

Our City Forest (OCF) has not always had a cultivation nursery to support its mission of greening Silicon Valley and engaging volunteers. The land that the Nursery leases today on Spring Street was made available by the City of San Jose in 2010, many years after CEO Rhonda Berry founded the nonprofit in 1994. A look at Our City Forest’s operation before it acquired the Nursery underscores just how valuable it is to OCF today. The Nursery enables OCF to control the supply, quality, and species of the trees and shrubs it wishes to plant, all  while expanding its community of volunteers.

The beginning of the Watson Park Tree Bank shade structure.

Back in the day, OCF had to rely on wholesale nurseries in Sunol and the Central Valley for its trees. The wholesalers trucked the trees to an OCF “tree bank,” a storage yard for trees and supplies. They were located at a succession of sites in San Jose, first in Japantown then Watson and Kelly Parks. To get trees from the tree banks to the planting sites, OCF had to improvise. Rhonda estimates that OCF did not own trucks for the first 25,000 trees it planted.  Instead, volunteers brought their own trucks to move trees, which resulted in headaches if their vehicles were dinged in the process. Volunteers also brought shovels and other necessary tools.

While the early plantings sometimes took unpredictable turns that had OCF flying by the seat of its pants, longtime Tree Amigo and Nursery Docent Judi Wilson remembers them fondly: “We had fun.”

The use of wholesalers and tree banks worked well enough that OCF was able to plant some 2,000 trees per year. However, the quality of trees received from the wholesalers was uneven and in many cases, some were unusable.  As Staff Arborist Bo Firestone, who joined OCF in 2007, put it, “We would have trees delivered from a wholesale nursery perhaps the day before a project, and we might have to send half of them back. We then would be scrambling for last minute substitutions. Sometimes we wouldn’t even be able to plant all of the trees for a project because we had to reject some of them.”

The Watson Park Tree Bank shade structure.

The reasons for rejection varied. Trees arrived that were too small or too large for planting. Some were root bound or the roots were not developed sufficiently for planting.  Some came with wounds or other damage, or structurally they were unsuitable. For example, some trees arrived topped, others lacked a strong central leader, and still others had been pruned into ‘lollipops’ - a popular conception of how mature trees should look that when imposed on young trees limits their access to photosynthates, the very thing that drives their growth.

Tree banks added another dimension of unpredictability. The availability of these sites was neither guaranteed nor always the best place to keep trees.  For example, while using Watson Park to store trees, winter rains caused nearby Coyote Creek to flood. Christian Bonner, head arborist at the time, had the disquieting experience of watching the flood waters carry 6,000 donated tree seedlings downstream. Later, in 2005, OCF was forced to vacate the park when lead and other toxins from an old municipal dump were found in its topsoil, a discovery that closed the park for almost six years while it was cleaned. A 10 month delay in receiving approval for a new site from the City of San Jose limited OCF’s ability to plant trees. Volunteers were not allowed in the tree bank, and OCF, without AmeriCorps members in its early years, had only its staff available for plantings.

After the closure of Watson Park, OCF moved its tree bank to Kelly Park, a site that was large enough to accommodate both a shade house (built by Tree Amigos) and a limited amount of cultivation along with the usual stores of trees and equipment. As much as OCF members appreciated the charm of the park and the opportunity to grow plants, it would be OCF’s final tree bank. Bigger opportunities were in store for OCF, namely the chance to finally plant trees on privately owned, residential properties--a development that hitherto had been denied OCF and one with vast, untapped possibilities.  It made a cultivating nursery, i.e., a place to grow the trees needed for residential planting, a necessity.

The Kelly Park Tree Bank.

For the first 15 years of its existence, Our City Forest relied on grants that stipulated OCF could plant only on public lands, such as parks and schools, or along streets. However, in 2007, the City of San Jose passed its Green Vision initiative that among other actions called for planting 100,000 trees by 2022, including on private property.

The OCF Team at the Kelly Park Tree Bank in 2008.

Rhonda Berry approached the City about its expansion of urban forestry goals, knowing the largest untapped planting area was within private yards. OCF and the City reaffirmed their partnership in greening San Jose through jointly leveraged resources, knowing that more varieties of trees were needed--and not to mention simply more trees!  From this confluence of events and political support came the beginnings of Our City Forest’s Community Nursery, but much more funding and support would be required, and from outside San Jose.