calflora.org

Calflora is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit database of wild California plants, based in Berkeley, CA. It holds over 3.1 million plant observations covering more than 8,000 plants, and it offers public tools for exploring what grows where and for planning native plantings. It is useful if you want to identify or research California wild plants, check what grows in a specific place, or choose native species for a garden. Calflora states it is not affiliated with other organizations and relies on individual donations to fund its staff, projects, and programs.

What Calflora covers

The core of the site is an observation database. According to Calflora, the collection includes:

• Over 3.1 million plant observations
• More than 8,000 plants

Observations are tied to contributors, and the site credits photographers and recorders by name alongside species entries — for example, Arctostaphylos manzanita ssp. laevigata (Dick Rawson), Salix breweri (R.A. Chasey), and Viburnum ellipticum (Hunter Breck). This matters if you want to see who documented a plant and where the record came from, rather than treating the database as anonymous.

The main tools

What Grows Here?

This tool answers location-based questions: what plants grow in a particular state park, or what a plant you noticed on a hike might be. You supply a place, and Calflora returns the plants associated with it. It is the entry point for curiosity-driven searches — a park you plan to visit, a trail where you saw something unfamiliar, or a spot you want to compare against other areas.

The Planting Guide

The Planting Guide is for garden planning. The workflow described by Calflora is:

1. Find your location on the map.
2. Select any filters you care about — for example, low water plants, plants that grow in shade, or riparian plants.
3. Click "Search."

The result is a list of plants matching your criteria, and from there you can open further details on each plant. The filters are optional; you can search on location alone if you have no other constraints.

Great Places to view native plants

Calflora also includes detailed information on over 150 places (and growing) for viewing native plants in the wild. This is a browsing resource rather than a search tool — useful when you want a destination rather than a species.

How to decide whether to use it

Calflora is a fit when your question is about California wild plants specifically and you want location-linked records rather than general horticultural advice. If your interest is outside California, or you need cultivation instructions beyond what a species entry provides, the database is not the right starting point.

Practical notes

• The database is donation-funded. Calflora describes itself as relying on individual donations to fund staff, projects, and programs, and links to a tax-deductible contribution page. Nothing in the available material indicates a paid tier or a login requirement, so treat access terms as unconfirmed rather than assuming either free-and-open or restricted.
• Coverage is California-only by design, so out-of-state observations will not appear.
• Records are contributed, which means quality and completeness vary by species and region; a sparse result for a location may reflect recording activity as much as actual plant distribution.

Calflora's Planting Guide lets you find native California wild plants suited to your yard by locating your area on a map and filtering for conditions like low water, shade, or riparian (streamside) habitat. It is a good fit if you garden in California and want species native to the state; it is not a general plant-care tool, and it does not replace checking your specific site's soil, sun, and spacing needs.

What the Planting Guide does

Calflora is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Berkeley, CA, and its database holds over 3.1 million plant observations covering more than 8,000 plants. The Planting Guide draws on that database to answer a practical question: which native wild plants will grow where you live?

Rather than browsing all 8,000+ plants, you narrow the list by location and by the growing conditions you actually have.

Step-by-step: finding plants for your garden

1. Find your location on the map. The guide starts with a map. Locate your garden's spot on it — this is what ties the results to your area's native flora.
2. Set your plant preferences. Check the options that match your yard, such as:
   • Low water plants
   • Plants that grow in shade
   • Riparian plants
3. Click "Search." Calflora returns all the plants that fit your location and the criteria you selected.
4. Explore each plant's details. From the results, open individual plants to see further information before deciding what to plant.

The expected result is a filtered list of native species matched to your location and conditions, not a generic catalog.

Choosing your filters

You can combine filters, but each one narrows the list — start with the conditions that matter most in your yard and add others only if the results are still too broad.

Related tools worth knowing

• What Grows Here? — answers what plants grow in a given place, such as a state park or a spot you noticed on a hike. Useful for identifying plants you've seen rather than planning a garden.
• Great Places to view native plants — Calflora includes detailed information on over 150 (and growing) places to see native plants, helpful if you want to observe species in the wild before planting them.

Common sticking points

• The map is the starting point. If you skip locating your area, the filters alone won't tailor results to your region.
• Filters describe habitat, not care instructions. A plant matching "low water" still needs the right soil and spacing; use the plant detail pages to check further.
• Native to California ≠ native to your exact spot. The guide matches by location, but conditions within a yard (slope, soil, reflected heat) can vary.

If you find the tool useful, note that Calflora relies on individual donations to fund its staff, projects, and programs, and contributions are tax-deductible.

"What Grows Here?" is Calflora's location-based plant lookup: you point it at a place in California, and it returns the wild plants recorded there. It draws on Calflora's database of over 3.1 million plant observations covering more than 8,000 plants, so it works best as a way to check what has actually been documented in an area rather than to predict what could grow there.

What the tool answers

According to Calflora, "What Grows Here?" is built for questions like:

• What plants grow in a specific place, such as a state park you plan to visit?
• What is that plant you noticed on a hike?

Both cases come down to the same action: define a location, then read the plant list Calflora returns for it.

How to use it

1. Open "What Grows Here?" from Calflora's Explore section.
2. Specify your location. The tool is organized around places in California, so you need a defined area — a park, a trail vicinity, or another spot you can locate.
3. Run the search. Calflora returns the plants recorded in that area from its observation database.
4. Open a plant's page to see further details about that species.

The expected result is a plant list tied to your chosen place, not a general California species list.

What it is good for, and what it is not

Practical notes

• Observations, not guarantees. The results reflect what has been recorded in Calflora's database. A species absent from a result may still occur there; it may simply not be documented yet.
• Location matters most. The quality of your answer depends on how precisely you define the area you are asking about.
• Pair it with the Planting Guide for garden decisions. If your real question is "what native plants will grow in my backyard," the Planting Guide is the matching tool: find your location on the map, optionally check filters like low water plants, shade plants, or riparian plants, and search.

Calflora is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Berkeley, CA, and relies on individual donations to fund its staff and programs.

Calflora is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, California, and it relies on individual donations to survive. If you want to support it, the direct route is making a tax-deductible contribution through the donation link on calflora.org. Those donations fund Calflora's staff, projects, and programs. The site states that it is not affiliated with other organizations, so individual giving—rather than support routed through a partner group—is what keeps it running.

What your donation actually funds

According to Calflora's own support page, contributions go toward:

• Staff — the people who maintain and develop the database
• Projects — ongoing work on the platform
• Programs — the services built on top of the data

The organization describes itself as independent and unaffiliated with other organizations, which is why it says it depends on individual donations rather than institutional backing.

Why the database is worth supporting

Understanding what you're helping maintain makes the case clearer. Calflora's database includes:

That content supports tools like What Grows Here?, which answers questions such as what plants grow in a particular state park or what an interesting plant spotted on a hike might be, and the Planting Guide, which lets you find your location on a map, filter for conditions like low water, shade, or riparian plants, and search for species that fit.

How to make a contribution

1. Go to calflora.org.
2. Find the Support Calflora section.
3. Click the link to make a tax-deductible contribution.

Calflora's page does not list specific donation amounts, tiers, or membership levels, so the amount is left to you. The site's framing is simply that "every donation helps."

What is not stated

The available Calflora material does not describe:

• Specific suggested or minimum donation amounts
• Recurring versus one-time giving options
• Membership benefits or recognition tiers
• Any non-donation ways to support the organization

If those details matter to you, check the donation page directly, since the support information summarized here covers only the general mechanism and purpose of giving.

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

1. Start from the places list. Browse the collection of over 150 locations to find sites in a region you plan to visit.
2. 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.
3. 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

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.