The favorite of many visitors, The Cypress Grove Trail winds through one of only two naturally growing stands of Monterey Cypress trees remaining on earth.
These cypresses, which formally extended over a much wider range, withdrew to these fog-shrouded headlands as the climate changed with the close of the Pleistocene epoch 15,000 ears ago.
The orange, velvety “stuff” especially noticeable on trees and rocks of the shadowed, north-facing slopes is a species of green algae called trentepholia. Its orange color comes from carotene, a pigment which also occurs in carrots. The plant does not harm the trees.* (Point Lobos State Natural Reserve - park guide)
