The Moreton Bay Fig of St. Luke's
United StatesSan FranciscoBernal Heights / Mission
Approximate location.
Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego have the grand Moreton Bay figs. San Francisco has this one, and the species is genuinely uncommon this far up the coast, where the summers are cool and the fog comes in for days at a time. It is an Australian rainforest tree, a banyan relative whose big specimens spread a wide crown over roots that buttress out along the ground, and Mike Sullivan, who wrote the standard book on this city's trees, files it simply as a very large specimen. The city's Landmark Tree list carries it, and a local history blog photographed it in 2009 and noted it had lately lost a branch, which is what happens to a crown this heavy on a street corner. The address is the thing to know before you go. The city register files it under 3555 Cesar Chavez Street, the hospital it stands in front of, and you will not find the tree on Cesar Chavez. It is around the corner on Valencia Street, west side, just south of the junction, fronting the grounds rather than fenced inside them, so the sidewalk is close enough. Nobody has published an age or a girth for it, which for a fig of this size is a gap worth closing.
This tree looks much the same in every month of the year, so there is no season to chart.
Valencia Street, south of Cesar Chavez Street, west side, near CPMC Mission Bernal (formerly St. Luke's Hospital), 3555 Cesar Chavez StreetOn Valencia Street rather than on Cesar Chavez: west side, just south of the junction, in front of the hospital. It is the wide-crowned evergreen fig, far bigger than anything else on the block.
Free, always visible from the public sidewalk on Valencia Street; stands on hospital grounds fronting the street rather than inside a fenced garden.
On Valencia Street at Cesar Chavez, in the Mission/Bernal Heights border; the 14, 49 and 67 Muni bus lines all pass within a couple of blocks.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.