On Saturday, October 15th at 4 pm, the Friends of San Pedro Valley Park welcome back Tom Parker, Professor of Biology, Emeritus, San Francisco State University for his presentation entitled, “Manzanitas as a whole ecosystem; their place in the ecology of California.”  Tom tells us: “While I’ve given a few talks on manzanitas, I’ve been impressed by how they seem to be the center of a lot of interconnected interactions. I’ll use this talk to pull all those previous ideas together with new information about how plants are the center of a world of interactions. Given that chaparral is rapidly becoming a despised vegetation just because it burns, I think it’s important to emphasize its critical role as a part of interacting systems. There are plenty of human benefits to this system, which along our coast and in the Sierra is dominated by manzanitas. Lots of pictures, and of their pretty relatives as well.”

This talk will take place indoors at the SPVP Visitor Center as we resume our in-person program of educational lectures (masks will be optional). Please join us for what promises to be another very informative and interesting talk on manzanitas.

About the speaker:  Tom Parker (V. Thomas Parker) Professor of Biology at SF State University for 40 years, now Emeritus.  He is a plant ecologist/evolutionist focusing on plant community dynamics and conservation.  He is also an expert in the systematics and ecology of Arctostaphylos species (co-author of treatments for Flora of North America [2009] and Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California [2012]). Tom has performed research on dispersal, seed banks, seedling establishment and fire response, mycorrhizae, and other aspects of ecology and evolution in a variety of California vegetation types, especially chaparral and tidal wetlands.  His publications include over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, three edited books, and one co-authored Field Guide to Manzanitas.