I live in Europe and don’t travel to American cities very often.
When I do, one of the things that strikes me, usually the first evening when I lay in bed with jet lag unable to sleep, is how it sounds different; the traffic, the sirens, the street.
In the morning, unable to sleep because of jet lag, I wander these streets to gain an idea of where I am and one of the many things that strike me is the way it smells different too.
Here in San Francisco the streets have smelt of coffee, cinnamon, ocean, garlic roasting, tortillas baking and unfortunately in some places urine. But above all of these it is the smell of the Eucalyptus tree that surprises me the most.
San Francisco is perhaps not famous for its trees although many associate the redwood with California. Just north outside of the city, an hour’s drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and along Highway 1 and you will find yourself at Muir Woods, a protected forest of Giant Redwoods. They are mighty (further north at the town of Leggett you can still find a drive- thru tree) and you feel insignificant among them but unfortunately the experience is tempered by the presence of a lot of other insignificants relating to the same experience.
One section known as cathedral Grove actually needs to remind us to be quiet so as the experience can be closer to holy than the crowds ordain. If you go there take the four-mile hike through the forest to the beach, then you will be alone, except for the occasional mountain lion; it is heartening that the mountainous areas north and south of the city are still home to Cougar and Condor.
I like Giant Redwoods but it is not a tree that you can imagine to smuggle home with you on the aeroplane. The Red Bottle Brush tree however makes me want to do just that. Now in late summer the streets of San Francisco are full of these and they are in celebratory bloom. The street that runs along side Fort Mason is a festival of colour and everywhere you turn you see another.
Funny thing is though no one you ask seems to know the name of the tree; one man that I saw sweeping up under a magnificent specimen in front of his house in the Haight section of town told me the name was “very annoying tree”.
I persevered, asking anyone I met that fitted my mental picture of a horticulturist (modelled on an image of my mother-in-law) and was close enough to a tree for me to point. Some looked at me as if I was crazy, some said that they didn’t know and one suggested Indian Flame Something; fanciful, poetic but inaccurate.
It turns out the family name is Myritaceae, genus name is callistemon and species name is Rigidus. Which all goes to explain why I have chosen Eucalyptus for the letter E.
I don’t know that the Eucalyptus is particularly “Californian”, I have marvelled at them many times in Spain for a start, but they grow well in this city, sometimes large.
The seeds that litter the floor can look like they fell from an aristocrats tweed jacket but the leaf is simple but possesses an aesthetic combination of curve and arrow, it is impossible not to pick one up and put it in your pocket or scrapbook.
They are not ubiquitous to the city, days can pass without being aware of them and then suddenly their bittersweet smell calls to you and you stop and turn.
Some of the most beautiful lie on the edge of Golden Gate Park, the long strip of “pre-park” known as the Panhandle. Even though this area of tree and grass is bordered by three lanes of traffic on each side it is the Eucalyptus that you smell, not the gasoline, something that also happens down in the Mission alongside Highway 101 as it races to leave the city.
If it were not for this surprising smell it would be easy to miss the Eucalyptus here in San Francisco.
Fort mason is a very beautiful place to walk standing as it does on a rocky peninsular skirted at some distance by the road, and leading from the Marina (and possibly the world’s biggest Safeway) to the calm and beauty of the beach hidden and often forgotten at the end of Fisherman’s Wharf past the Cannery.
There are very beautiful and colourful Bottle-Brush trees lining one side, cyclists, joggers and dog walkers to dodge, the weird twisted and tortured growth of bush trees (sorry I don’t know the real name but you will recognise them from this description if you see them), the Piers of Fort mason, The Golden Gate bridge, a strange statue and sightings of sailing boats, seals and Alcatraz Island all clamouring your attention.
But then suddenly you sense the pungent smell of Eucalyptus and surprised you stop and turn.
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