The tules, cattails, and other marsh plants also sustained the local indigenous Ohlone people for thousands of years and shaped the texture and flavor of their lives. Although not a classic tule marsh-in fact, the tules here are in danger of being displaced by the more aggressive cattails-the park’s wetlands harbor a diversity of aquatic plants, including tules, and a complex and fascinating wildlife community that relies on the plants for food and shelter. Most of the Bay Area’s historic freshwater marsh habitat has been lost as wetlands have been filled for development and the creeks feeding them imprisoned in concrete channels.įortunately, Bay Area residents don’t need to venture “out in the tules” to see a remaining freshwater marsh habitat they need only go as far as Coyote Hills Regional Park in southern Alameda County, near the east end of the Dumbarton Bridge. But this ecosystem is also threatened, for many of the same reasons. With the current spotlight on conserving and restoring San Francisco Bay’s tidal saltwater marshes, our region’s freshwater marshes have received less attention. It’s ironic that what used to be such a prevalent and important environment has been so reduced as to serve as a synonym for out-of-the-wayness. Tule fog remains a winter menace along the valley’s roads, but most of the freshwater marshes where tule grew are now gone. They supported vast flocks of waterfowl and herds of elk, and were central to the economy and culture of native peoples like the Wintun and the Yokuts. Enormously productive marshes once covered great swaths of the Central Valley, including the Tulare Basin (“tulare” is Spanish for “tule marsh”).

My roommate’s reference was to obscure patches of the state’s interior wetlands, remnants that had not yet been drained, filled, or paved over. They’re a major component of freshwater marsh vegetation along with sedges, other bulrushes, and cattails. Tules, I eventually learned, are just one of California’s 23 kinds of bulrush, specifically Scirpus acutus var. But the connection between these references was not immediately obvious to me.

I had heard about Tule Lake, site of the World War II internment camp, and about the treacherous tule fog in the Central Valley. It seemed clear from the context that “the tules” was the California equivalent of “the sticks” or “the boondocks,” connoting remoteness and unsophistication. Like a lot of things about California, it was a little mysterious to an expatriate Southerner. “Out in the tules” was a phrase I first heard from a San Joaquin Valley-born college roommate more than 20 years ago.

Coyote hills regional park