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May 3, 2009
San Diego Zoo
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For those of you that haven't been there, and I may possibly be the last one of earth that had never been there, The San Diego zoo is pretty an amazing place. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I'd heard it was a cool zoo. But what I like about it is that in the middle of San Diego they've built a tropical rain forest. All of San Diego is irrigated with water from the Colorado River which has it's headwaters on the western slopes of Colorado and runs past Moab, Utah, then through the Grand Canyon and, in theory at least, should empty into the Sea of Cortez. However, it runs dry in the desert long before it reaches the Sea of Cortez. The reason for this is that the cities like San Diego suck it dry long before it reaches there to grow rice in Arizona and create rain forests in San Diego. But I digress.
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The zoo is beautiful and I wandered through it for some time, but it's built on a series of hills, so walking uphill is not as pleasanant as walking downhill so eventually I opted for the double-decker bus tour. It's not as much exercise, but it's one way to put the park into perspective somewhat. I did notice that there are some European-style escalators...sort of like the ones that bring you up out of the Tube in London. There's no stairs, just an inclined moving plane that hauls your carcass up the hill.
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While I was there, I met a man that's a professor at a local university. He was scribbling some notes while studying an enormous Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla), also commonly referred to as a Banyan tree.
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He was able to correctly identify the Elkhorn fern, which wasn't labeled, so I asked him the name of the purple carpet of flowers I see all over California. But he wasn't sure. He mentioned that the highway department is fond of planting Oleander for erosion control, a highly poisonous flower, apparently.
It turns out he's in charge of the school's apiary, which was quite fortunate because my neighbor Bud just set one up a few weeks ago. So now, I figure we have someone we can consult with on bee-related questions.
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The rainforest aviary is amazing, with a creek running through it with waterfalls and it rains every so often from giant overhead sprinklers and little covered benches to watch the birds.
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This is a shot of a male Reichenow's Weaver (Ploceus bagalafecht reichenowi) on one of the feeders.
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I took a self-guided botanical walking tour of the zoo and was able to identify this (above) as a species of Coral tree, which I recall seeing in Mexico and Peru.
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The zoo is beautiful and I wandered through it for some time, but it's built on a series of hills, so walking uphill is not as pleasant as walking downhill so I opted for the double-decker bus touch.
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Before I left, I asked what kind of tree this was and, though no one knew, some guy googled it from the zoo office while I was there and came up with the correct identification. It's a Red Bottle-Brush plant (Callistemon citrinus).
Posted by Rob Kiser on May 3, 2009 at 11:34 AM
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