theater inside the park that bore his name. In his 1910 book Parks, Boulevards, and Playgrounds, Griffith laid out some fairly progressive ideas about city parks, including the notion that they should be free to everyone so as not to become the playgrounds of the rich. He also wrote that cities had an obligation to provide public transportation to the parks so everyone could access them—issues we are still dealing with more than a hundred years later. (He walked the walk on this, too—at various times, both Griffith and his son, Van, personally ran their own bus lines into the park when the City refused.) In that book, though, Griffith was also prickly about being excluded from society life and euphemistically described his prison time as “my forced absence from the city,” so . . . we can’t say he was totally repentant about the whole shooting-his-wife-in-the-face thing either.
Griffith died on July 6, 1919, embroiled in a court battle with a parks commission that didn’t want to accept his donations for the theater and observatory. He left the money for the park in his will as the Griffith J. Griffith Charitable Trust, which continues to actively fight for the preservation, protection, and improvement of the park today. Griffith J. Griffith is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard.
FLORA AND FAUNA
Visitors fighting their way through the “concrete jungle” of Los Angeles are often surprised to see the vast array of wild plant and animal life that makes its home in Griffith Park. The most commonly seen mammals are mule deer, squirrels, and coyotes, although it is not uncommon to run into raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and skunks on the trails as well. Quiet and lucky visitors may be blessed with a glimpse of a bobcat (it took me years of hiking here before I spotted one while writing this book). In 2012, researchers discovered a male mountain lion, now known as P-22, living inside Griffith Park—you will most likely never see him, but if you come across tracks, consider yourself extremely lucky!
A number of lizards and snakes make their home in Griffith Park, too—you will most often encounter alligator lizards and western fence lizards in the park (the western fence lizards are the ones that look like they’re doing pushups; alligator lizards are more commonly found near water sources). These lizards often have a habit of bolting through the brush while you’re hiking nearby, spooking you into thinking something more dangerous is around. During the wet season, you may also get to see (or hear) western toads near creeks, arroyos, or the Los Angeles River. Most snakes that live inside the park are harmless, but the Southern Pacific rattlesnake is here as well and should be treated with caution (more on that in a bit).
An L.A. Conservation Corps worker helps an alligator lizard find its way back to the Los Angeles River.
Bug lovers will enjoy walking the paths and trails of the parks, where they’re almost guaranteed to see at least a stink beetle showing off its good side to humans. Praying mantises will often hang out hoping to catch a meal on branches; numerous moths and butterflies can be found depending on the season; and there’s a common, slow-moving insect with the wonderful name of diabolical ironclad beetle—known as the tank of the insect world.
Tarantulas are known to hike the trails at sunset during their mating season. These arachnids only bite in self-defense, and their venom is weaker than that of a typical bee. They burrow underground and are very sensitive to the vibration of the ground—for example, from passing feet, wheels, or hooves.
If you’re not a birder, Griffith Park may inspire you to become one. More than two hundred species of birds have been identified in the park, which is both a wintering home for many species and a pit stop on migration paths. The range of birds here is impressive—crows and ravens swipe goodies from picnickers; great blue herons slowly stalk the Los Angeles River looking for frogs and fish to eat; majestic birds of prey like red-tailed hawks, Cooper’s hawks, and peregrine falcons soar on thermals far above the park; Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds zip through the chaparral sipping nectar; mockingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks fill the air with song (a great reason to leave those headphones and speakers at home); acorn woodpeckers fill up trees with future meals; and California scrub jays can sometimes be spotted darting to and from their food caches—research has shown they can remember up to two hundred storage locations, along with what’s stored inside and how quickly it’s decaying.
Tarantulas may inspire fear, but they’re pretty harmless to humans. (photo by Raphael Mazor)
The main plant communities found in Griffith Park are coastal sage scrub and chaparral. I’ve used this joke before, but there’s an easy way to tell the difference: If you smell nice, you’re in sage scrub. If you’re bleeding, you’re in chaparral.
Both communities are dominated by low-growing, brushy shrubs. Sage scrub, as the name would imply, features fragrant but unassuming California sagebrush (often called “cowboy cologne”) along with various species of sage like black and white sage. California buckwheats—which flower through much of the year—are common, and California brittlebush puts on a bright yellow sunflowerlike display in the early spring. Larger shrubs include leafy toyon and lemonade berry as well as ceanothus.
Chaparral is often mixed in along with sage scrub (if you want to get super technical, we’re in a subecoregion of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion called the California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion), but generally the plants in chaparral are tougher, need less water, and are more likely to poke you with something. You can usually find these plants on the sunnier south-facing slopes in the park. Prickly pear cactus can be found here, along with Shaw’s agave and otherworldly Dudleya species, chamise, manzanita, and yucca.
COULD IT HAVE BEEN TOYONWOOD?
An oft-repeated but most likely apocryphal story about how Hollywood got its name goes like this: There are large bushes growing all over the Santa Monica Mountains here that produce showy red berries in late fall and early winter. Heteromeles arbutifolia is commonly known as toyon, but to the swarms of new residents coming to Los Angeles from the East, the plant looked enough like holly to be called California holly or Christmas berry. A lot of holly here, therefore, Hollywood. Sounds good, right?
That origin of Hollywood has been attributed to Daeida Wilcox Beveridge. If you start digging into it, you’ll find Beveridge is also the source of about a half dozen alternate origins for the name, too. There’s more evidence that Beveridge got the name from her neighbor Ivar Weid, who lived in what he called Holly Canyon . . . which, actually, might have been named after those toyon after all. As they say, “This is the West—when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
No matter where the name came from, toyon is still plentiful in the hills of Griffith Park, and its bright red berries are a clear indicator that winter is on its way. Toyon is also the only California native plant to retain its indigenous name (from the Bay Area Ohlone people) and makes a wonderful drought-tolerant evergreen shrub, providing food and habitat to dozens of species throughout the year. Toyon was named the official plant of Los Angeles in 2012.
When its berries are present, toyon is easy to spot on the hills around Los Angeles.
Purple sage (Salvia leucophylla) blooms at different elevations for months, while delicate mariposa lilies (genus Calochortus) are more elusive.