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    Calflora provides information on wild California plants for conservation, education, and appreciation.
 
About Calflora

Species Information

Plant Observation Library

Plant Name Library

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Short History of Calflora
(A list of collaborators appears below)

Calflora was started in 1994 by Ann Dennis while at the US Forest Service to help assess how management practices might affect wildlife, plant diversity, and forest health. Originally an 8-character DOS filename, Calflora was a database of species information that could be downloaded and used on a personal computer. Subsequent versions made the taxon table a web-searchable database, and tested the three table concept of taxon, synonymy and occurrence data.

In 1997, Calflora began collaborating with the UC Berkeley Digital Library Research Project to unite the Calflora database with a collection of wildflower images. Digital Library Project staff members including Ginger Ogle, Joyce Gross, Jeff Anderson-Lee, and Loretta Willis have provided invaluable assistance in advising and developing the technical infrastructure of Calflora. The nucleus of the CalPhotos wildflower image collection was formed by a donation of scanned slides from photographer and amature botanist Brother Alfred Brousseau of St. Mary's College. Additional photo donations from the California Academy of Sciences, California Department of Food and Agriculture, and many private individuals. Calflora has worked with the Digital Library Project to grow CalPhotos to well over 28,000 plant photos.

Other collaborators have included the Texas A&M University Bioinformatics Working Group and the UC Davis Information Center for the Environment.

Tony Morosco also joined Calflora in 1997 to begin assembling a library of observation data on California plants, and has since moved into the role of technical management and development of Calflora.

In January of 2000 Ann Dennis, Tony Morosco, John Game, Emily Roberson, and Dean Taylor founded the public benefit corporation The Calflora Database to ensure the future of Calflora's information resources.

Calflora remains an independent organization dedicated to providing scientific information about California plants for research, conservation, and education. Calflora is supported by a mixture of funding from government agencies, grants from foundations, and private donors. Many other individuals and organizations also contribute data, expertise, and technical support.

Calflora Board of Directors and Advisory Board


Financial Support

Financial support for Calflora has been provided by:
USDI Bureau of Land Management
UC Berkeley Digital Library Project
  The JiJi Foundation
USDA Forest Service
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
and private donations


Collaborators and Data Contributors

California Academy of Sciences Library
California Department of Fish and Game
California Natural Diversity Database
California Department of Food & Agriculture
California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES)
California Native Plant Society
Photographers contributing to the CalPhotos Database
San Jose State University
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM)
UC Berkeley Digital Library Project
UC Berkeley Museum Informatics Project (MIP)
UC Berkeley University and Jepson Herbaria
UC Davis Information Center for the Environment
USDA Forest Service
USDA National Plant Data Center
US Fish and Wildlife Service
US Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division
 
 
Calflora  -  1700 Shattuck Av #198, Berkeley, CA 94709  -  510 528-5426  -  CONTACT