What Calflora Provides About Great Places to View Native Plants
Calflora maintains detailed information on more than 150 places to view native plants in California, and that list continues to grow. These entries are meant to help you see wild plants in their natural habitats rather than in a garden setting. The site is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Berkeley, CA, and its database covers over 3.1 million plant observations and more than 8,000 plants.
What the "Great Places" listings contain
The places section sits alongside Calflora's other exploration tools, so it works as a companion to the plant data rather than a standalone travel guide. Each listed location is a site where native plants can be observed growing wild.
Because the underlying database is organized around plant observations, a place listing connects to the same records that power the rest of the site. That means a location is useful not just as a destination, but as a way to check which species have been recorded there.
How to use the places information
- Start from the places list. Browse the collection of over 150 locations to find sites in a region you plan to visit.
- Cross-check with "What Grows Here?" This tool answers questions like what plants grow in a particular state park or what an interesting plant you noticed on a hike might be. Use it to confirm what you can expect at or near a listed place.
- Look up individual species. Once you know what grows at a site, you can pull up further details on each plant in the database.
The practical result: you can plan a visit around a specific location, then arrive knowing which native plants have been documented there.
Where this fits among Calflora's tools
| Tool | What it answers | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Great Places to view native plants | Where can I see native plants in natural habitats? | Planning a trip or hike around wild plant viewing |
| What Grows Here? | What plants grow in a given area? | Checking a state park, a hike location, or an unfamiliar plant |
| Planting Guide | Which native wild plants will grow in my backyard? | Choosing plants for a home garden |
The places listings are the field-oriented option. The Planting Guide is garden-oriented — you find your location on a map, optionally filter for low water plants, shade plants, or riparian plants, and search for matching species. "What Grows Here?" sits between the two, answering location-based plant questions for any area rather than just a garden.
What to keep in mind
- The list of places is described as growing, so it is not a fixed or exhaustive catalog of California native plant sites.
- Calflora relies on individual donations to fund its staff, projects, and programs, and describes contributions as tax-deductible. If you find the places information useful, that is the stated way the nonprofit sustains the work.
- The site's scale — over 3.1 million observations across more than 8,000 plants — is what makes a place listing more than a name on a map: it links to documented species records.