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General questions about plants:
Can you give me more information about a particular California plant?
How can I grow California Poppies? (or some other plant)
I have this plant; can you tell me what it is?
I am looking for a plant by the common name of ...
Where can I find a source for California plants, seeds, etc?
Questions about our botanical databases:
Why can't I find any information on ... ?
How do I cite a reference to your online database?
I think there is an error in the Calflora occurrence database
Why isn't the California Plant Synonymy table available for download?
What is the relationship of Calflora to CalPhotos and the Berkeley
Digital Library Research Project?
Can you add me to the announcements email list?
Questions about our botanical photographs (CalPhotos)
plant identifications, contributing photos, permissions and usage
Q: Why can't I find any information on ...?
Calflora only has geographic and ecological distribution information on vascular plants that are native (indigenous)
or naturalized (growing, reproducing and persisting in the wild without
human intervention) to the political borders of California. Calflora DOES
NOT contain information on plants that are growing with human intervention
(generally: being watered, sheltered or cared for in some way) These include
gardens, manicured parks, or strictly agricultural weeds. If the plant you are looking
for is not native or naturalized in California, it will not be in Calflora.
This includes plants such as tulips, daffodils, rosemary, lemon trees, or any strictly horticultural plant growing in California.
You may also have a mis-spelling or spelling variation of the plant's name.
(see the section on Common
Names below.)
Q: Can you give me more information about a particular California plant?
All the information available through Calflora and the CalPhotos
collection is available on the web. So your search results represent everything
that we have available to the public. We do not have a physical
library of information to refer to or experts available for public services.
Our research primarily concerns the
use of already-digitized botanical information, including images, location,
and collection information. Calflora does not currently contain information
on medicinal, ethnobotanical, toxicological, horticultural, physiological,
or economic topics. As such, our staff botanist is not generally available
to provide library research services for the public.
The California Academy of Sciences,
Biodiversity Resource Center
has an excellent reference staff for general questions.
If there is additional
information you are looking for on the web, you will need to consult other
sources such as the Internet
Directory for Botany.
You can also try joining the
California Native Plant Discussion Group administered by Greg McCann.
Please remember that most botanical information remains available only in
printed form, and may require your effort in retrieving it.
Q: Can you add me to the announcements email list?
We send out an email of changes and updates to the Calflora
and CalPhotos web pages about four or five times a year, as
changes dictate. If you would like to be on the mailing list
for these announcements, please email us here:
CONTACT
with your request and email address.
Q: How can I grow California Poppies? (or some other plant)
Neither Calflora nor the CalPhotos collection currently have information
on horticulture or growing California native plants. There are many, many
other sources of information for growing California native plants (mostly
books). You may wish to consult a gardening book such as Sunset Western
Garden Book
or the California Native Plant Society
Booksales.
You can also try joining the
California Native Plant Discussion Group administered by Greg McCann.
Q: I have this plant; can you tell me what it is?
Trying to figure out what a plant is based on an email description is often
very, very difficult. Some plant species can only be told apart (reliably)
by nearly microscopic details. If you seriously want to get a plant identified,
there are several places you can try.
If your plant was growing in the wild, you can try your local chapter of the
California Native Plant Society,
Botanical
Garden, or herbarium (to find your local California herbarium, search
Index Herbariorum,
and use "CA" for state).
You can also try joining the
California Native Plant Discussion Group administered by Greg McCann.
If your plant was NOT growing in the wild, you should try asking at
your local plant nurseries or Botanical
Garden.
The UC Davis Herbarium
also offers plant
identification services to the public for a fee.
Q: I am looking for a plant by the common name of ...? or do you know
a common name for this plant?
Common names, unlike scientific names, are not regulated or managed by
any one body. Thus, many common names are idiosyncratic. There are many
common names that are:
- identical, but refer to different plants...
- different, but refer to the same plant...
- used frequently in one location, but have never been heard of just a few
miles away...
- and some plants simply do not have any common name.
Calflora has collected common names from some major sources,
but it is nearly impossible to collect all the common names that exist
for all California plants. If you can not find a plant by common name that
you are sure is in California, you will probably need to find out the scientific
name for it first, then try searching Calflora.
We hope in the near future to standardize the common names we do have.
(according to guidelines such as
Common Names for Vascular Plants: Guidelines for use and application
Kartesz & Thieret, Sida 14(3):421-434. 1991.)
Scientific Names can be translated using the experimental
California Plant Synonymy table.
Q: I think there is an error in the Calflora occurrence database. Who
should I contact to correct it?
The occurrence database is collection of information from many different
sources. Just as in a real library, you generally wouldn't report an error
in a book to the librarian, rather you would report the error to the author
or editor. If you find an error in the Digital Library Calflora occurrence
database, please contact the data
provider for that dataset with the specific information about that
record, and send a copy here:
CONTACT.
Q: How do I cite a reference to your online database?
Please reference all photographs, documents, or database information that you use within your document.
For general references that refer to aggregated information in Calflora the citation format follows the following:
(recommended by the library staff at the California Academy of Sciences)
EXAMPLE 1: General Reference
Calflora: Information on California plants for education, research
and conservation. [web application]. 2000.
Berkeley, California: The Calflora Database [a non-profit organization].
Available: http://www.calflora.org/.
[Accessed: Oct 10, 2000]
For citing specific information (i.e. the elevation range, a particular report) the reference should include not only
the Calflora Project but also the actual source of the information as elaborated in the the Calflora documentation. For photos,
be sure to include the photographer's name. It is best to include the URL address for the data so that the exact query can be duplicated.
EXAMPLE 2: Specific Reference
The Calflora Database. [web application]. 2000.
Taxon report for Erythronium helenae
Distribution data from Dean W. Taylor Herbarium Specimens.
http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-taxon=Erythronium+helenae
[Accessed 20 December 1998]
The exact date of information access is important, since the database is continually updated.
Q: Where can I find a source for California plants, seeds, etc?
If you are looking for sources for garden material, your local nursery
can order many California native plants from their supplier. There are
also many specialty mail-order seed and plant catalogs for California native
plants. Check out some of the collected lists for gardening supplies for
sources. (such as the Internet
directory for botany)
You can also try joining the
California Native Plant Discussion Group administered by Greg McCann.
If you are looking for sources for material for botanical study
and experiments, you will probably want to contact one of California's
many Botanical Gardens or Herbaria, who can help you locate live material
and file the appropriate permits for collection of wild material. A list
of Californian botanical gardens is available from the American
Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta. Herbaria can be located
through Index Herbariorum
(enter CA for state)
Q: Why isn't the
California Plant Synonymy table available for download?
The Name translation table is a product of extensive research and hard work by
Fred Hrusa.
Fred plans on publishing this information in book and possibly database form
as a comprehensive synonymy list for California.
Fred has generously allowed Calflora access to his data for online use. Calflora
has modified this data beyond which Fred intended, and thus takes responsibilities for
omissions and inaccuracies in the results.
Please address particular questions here:
CONTACT
. Fred can be contacted at
gfhrusa@cdfa.ca.gov.
Q: What
is the relationship of Calflora to CalPhotos and the Berkeley
Digital Library Research Project?
Calflora is an independantly funded and run non-profit organization
dedicated to providing information about California wild plants
in useful forms to the public. Calflora partners with individuals,
organizations, and agencies to further this mission. The Berkeley
Digital Library Project is a research project in the Computer
Science Division of UC Berkeley, and has for several years used
environmental information as a testbed for developing new computer
science technologies. Together, we have found a fruitful collaboration
in image, spatial, temporal, and scientific information management
that has greatly benifited both organizations. Calflora works
under a agreement to share information and data resources with
DLP. CalPhotos is a project of the Digital Library Project for
the duration of their research program.
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