Learning about the Parks’ Ecosystem
The ecosystem in our waterfront parks need a fine balance of plants that protects the coastline from erosion, while sustaining the local pollinators in our city. Our parks team maintains the flower beds by weeding and supplementing them with new plants every growing season, battling drying heat and destructive storms. This 2023 summer season has been a challenge in protecting our plants and battling the encroaching and dominating weeds that threaten the balance that our staff cultivates in our delicate park ecosystem. We have created a list that will be a continuing series of “good” plants that are beneficial to the parks’ health and “bad” weeds that compete for growing space and suffocate the roots of our shrubs, flowers, and grasses.
Good Plants
Many of the native plantings in the park support the local ecosystem while also looking beautiful. Fragrant Sumac, or rhus aromatica, produces flowers in the spring that nurture butterflies and other early pollinators, and its leaves produce a lovely lemon scent when crushed. Since it can thrive in even dry summers and turns red in the fall, it helps the park look beautiful year-round, and since its along many pathways and bioswales throughout the park, its roots play a role in filtering runoff and rainwater.
Common Toadflax, aka butter-and-eggs. This wildflower is native to the UK, with records that date it to the Pleistocene stage, so it’s been around for a long time! And because it acts as a perennial plant when established, which means it returns each growing season, it’s doubly so. Look for its yellow-and-orange flowers that are tightly packed on a tall spike and distinctive spurs.
Isn't she a beauty! This week we're highlighting the Hibiscus Mallow, otherwise known as the rose mallow. This hardy hibiscus is a perennial that loves the full sun and thrives in the wet conditions of the park. The flowers support local pollinator groups, attracting hummingbirds, butterflies, and specialized bees. And why is this plant extra sweet?The leaf buds and young leaves of this plant were used in Ancient Egypt to create a dessert that inspired the summer sweet treat marshmallow, hence the name! Look out for it next time you're on a stroll, it's a show stopper.
Don't be fooled by the name Little Bluestem, because this beautiful native grass that can be found in our parks is essential to a healthy waterfront ecosystem. You can find this beauty planted along the berms that help protect the neighborhood from flooding, where their strong root system protects against erosion. They are susceptible to the invasive weeds that out compete them, which causes soil loss. To help this plant, we've replanted 451 bluestems in the park this year to replace the ones that were lost last season. Look out for the grass' lovely blue-green color in the summer and watch as it turns golden in the fall.
Cone Flowers are better known by their medicinal name, echinacea, are a beloved flower for local pollinators and herbalists. The beautiful perennials are drought resistant, humidity resistant and native to our area, which we love for our park's ecosystem. These flowers are hard to miss as you can find them all over the parks, and can stand as tall as 4 feet.
Along our walking paths you might have noticed bushes producing small fruits amid its leaves. The Beach Plum is a popular shrub grown along coastlines as their tolerance for sandy soil and salt resistant nature is perfect to help counter erosion and flooding, especially along beaches in the east coast. Their delicious fruit is popular to make into dessert and jellies in coastal towns, and is an important part of the diet of our local birds!
The Rosa Ragosas in the parks have finished blooming and started producing their fruit. Rose Hips are known in medicine for their anti-inflammatory purposes, budding from a beautiful rose. Our parks are filled with these bushes, and you can identify the fruit by their bright reddish-orange color when mature. They love full sun which is why we’ve planted them along our park paths, for the lovely decoration and purpose they bring in helping protect our parks against flooding.
You’re safe from vampires in Hunters Point. Purpletop Vervain is a plant that is popular to the pollinators in our parks, attracting butterflies and bees from all over. It is drought tolerant and easy to grow in most soil conditions, and is perfect to help bring beauty to our pathways as its blooms seem everlasting through the spring and summer. This beautiful perennial comes back every year so you can expect to find it the next time you visit our parks!
Staghorn Sumac is so called because of the forking pattern of the branches which resemble antlers. This breed of sumac can be grown as a tree or shrub, and play a vital role in preventing erosion along the berms in Hunter's Point South Park, with both the more classical smooth leaved and "tiger eyed" cultivars helping protect the soil. The sumac grows by spreading its roots through rhizomes underground, creating colonies that shoot out new growth. Because sumac is hardy and highly drought resistant, it helps protect against soil erosion which is why it is planted in several parts of the park on hillsides similarly to the marsh grasses.
Bad Plants
Beautiful but deadly, the Field Bindweed plant is a part of the morning glory family. Though bindweed bears a similar beauty to its annual cousin, this perennial weed overcrowds the sensitive biome of the park's flora, outgrowing and suffocating the roots of the marsh grasses and native flowers. Our volunteer gardeners have been hard at work, containing and weeding this plant and many others in the park, and you can join them during our volunteer garden hours!
One of the most common weeds in both parks, and throughout the city, is Common Mugwort. An invasive plant that originates from Eurasia and Alaska, this weed is mostly identified by its broad leaves, wide, deeply divided into finger-like, wedge or spatula-shaped lobes along the central vein and sage-like aroma when crushed. It’s great for foraging and has many medicinal uses, in its native habitats, but it outcompetes the local plants that are helping our pollinators and undermines the integrity of the park's green infrastructure when it chokes the native grasses.
The Woody Nightshade plant is a weed that has oval, pointed leaves that are yellowy-green in color. Purple flowers, with protruding yellow stamens, appear before the bright red, cherry tomato-like berries that hang in clusters. This femme fatale weed grows in our bioswales and the beds along luminescence and has toxic leaves and berries, so pet owners and parents beware.
The park has three different types of thistle we're battling: Bull Thistle, Common Sow Thistle, and Creeping Thistle. These weeds grow pretty flowers, but spread very quickly, outcompete our native plants and grasses for space and water, and the roots suffocate the rest of the plants they surround once established. Thistle must be handled with caution as they all feature spikes on different areas of the plant, with bull thistle pictured here, bearing spikes on its flowering bloom and along its stems and leaves.