Monkeyflower capsule The Peralta Community Gardens is one of three gardens in the Westbrae neighborhood. Berkeley Daily Planet reporter, Marilyn Claessens, dubbed the area "an ecological neighborhood" in a 2000 article on the coastal prairie habitat planted along the Ohlone Greenway by CHIA (California Habitat Indigenous Activists). On the last Saturday in May of this year I volunteered at a CHIA work party. I will write about the May work day as well as the history of the CHIA habitat project at a future date. I met an incredible group of people and keep in touch via a CHIA email list. Yesterday, I worked with the group again, this time in the garden and not along the Ohlone Greenway. I helped to collect seeds from the showy milkweed ( Asclepidaceae speciosa ), the soap plant ( Chlorogalum pomeridianum ), and monkeyflower (genus Diplacus , I think). The soap plant seed was the easiest to collect; large, hard seeds held in a dehiscent* fruit that easily fell into