page_title: Henry W. Coe State Park
section_title: Plant life
hierarchical_section_title: Henry W. Coe State Park / Ecology / Plant life
context_page_description: Henry W. Coe State Park is a state park of California, USA, preserving a vast tract of the Diablo Range. The park is located closest to the city of Morgan Hill, and is located in both Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties. The park contains over 87,000 acres, making it the largest state park in northern California, and the second-largest in the state. Managed within its boundaries is a designated wilderness area of about 22,000 acres. This is officially known as the Henry W. Coe State Wilderness, but locally as the Orestimba Wilderness. The 89,164-acre park was established in 1959.
context_section_description: Besides its size, the park is notable for a mostly intact flora.  Unlike many other Bay Area parks, there are no large stands of non-native trees or shrubs.  There are forested ridge-tops and slopes interspersed with chaparral and grasslands, with some creeks supporting distinct riparian vegetation.
  Native trees which dominate the park include valley oak (Quercus lobata), blue oak (Q. douglasii), coast live oak (Q. agrifolia), canyon live oak (Q. chrysolepis), interior live oak (Q. wislizenii), gray pine (Pinus sabiniana), ponderosa pine (P. ponderosa), pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), California laurel (Umbellularia californica), California buckeye (Aesculus californica), white alder (Alnus rhombifolia), California juniper (Juniperus californica), blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana) and California sycamore (Platanus racemosa).  Big-berry Manzanita (Arctostaphylos glauca) reach remarkable size within the park (over 20 feet (6 m) tall) and can grow as either small trees or large shrubs.  Other prominent shrubs and wildflowers include chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), eastwood manzanita (Arctostaphylos glandulosa), yerba santa (Eriodictyon californicum), buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus), California gooseberry (Ribes californicum), fuchsia-flowered gooseberry (Ribes speciosum), yellow mariposa lily (Calochortus luteus) and Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus betuloides).
  Of the trees, blue oak is the most common and widespread.  It is most noticeable in the eastern side of the park, where it often forms pure stands.  In other areas it may be dominated by other trees, but if the habitat will support trees, blue oak is usually there.  gray pine is also almost ubiquitous throughout, but curiously, is absent in much of the far southwestern portion, perhaps because of the influence of summer fog, rare elsewhere.
  Ponderosa pines dominate parts of three ridges in the west: Pine, Middle, and Blue, usually crowning the summits, but often extending down into cooler canyon slopes.  They are rarely very dense, and visitors accustomed to seeing ponderosa forests in the Sierra Nevada may come to two opposite, and fallacious, conclusions: 1) That the pines were logged, and all we see left is a small percentage of survivors; or 2) that they were all planted.  In reality, there is no evidence (stumps, historical accounts) that any significant logging took place, nor does the relatively wide extent of the stands and the great variety of age groups support a tree-planting theory.  Most likely, the pines are relicts of a broader distribution during cooler climates.  When the climate warmed, the only places the trees could survive were up on the high cooler ridges and shady slopes where they grow today.
  Chamise is undoubtedly the most abundant shrub in Coe Park, covering acres of hot, dry slopes and poor soils.
caption: Branch of a valley oak showing a woodpecker granary
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