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Calflora NEWS |
| Applications | ||||
| Searching for Plants | ||||
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What Grows Here?
What Grows Here? (WGH) can display a thorough plant list for a chosen area of the state. Select the area by moving and zooming the map, or draw a polygon, or choose a polygon from a background layer, such as the boundary of a park.
To find a named location in California, open WGH provides some interesting ways to visualize plant data -- for instance, displaying the locations of several plants on the map at the same time, assigning a different icon  to each plant. A set of plant - icon assignments is called a palette.
For example, here are fifteen commercially available, low-water native perennial grasses displayed in What Grows Here? starting near Santa Barbara. Move the map to where you live, and discover which of these grasses grow wild near you. More Examples of Custom Palettes:
Red and white alder locations in Northern California
(Hint: move the map to a new location, and press the button) Common North Coast native plants, starting in Fort Bragg Bay Area Manzanitas, starting in Oakland Asclepias species (milkweeds), starting near Redding, |
HELP
RELEASE NOTES
Icons and Palettes
Red and white alder locations:
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Advanced Search for Plants
This application provides for combinations of search criteria not available from the regular Search for Plants, such as:
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Examples: Native shrubs near Sacramento associated with bees
Perennial herbs with an affinity to serpentine soil
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Search for Plants
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Searching for Observations
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Observation Search
to search for observations with the help of a Google Map. This application shows contributed photos when they are available.
It is possible to limit the geographical extent of the search to
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HELP
Recent native plant observations with photos
Watching weeds:
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Observation Detail
In Observation Search when you click on the ID of an observation, a menu appears. Click detail in this menu to go to the Observation Detail page. Here is an example:
Mary Conway's record of Eriogonum umbellatum var. polyanthum This page shows basic information about the record. If you are signed into Calflora as a contributor, you can open  COMMENTS to read others' comments on the record, or add your own comment. Click on the Observer PROFILE to see basic information about the contributor.
If the contributor added photos to the record, they appear on the right hand side of this page. If you are signed into Calflora as a contributor, you will see a "Like" link under each photo. Click the link once to "like" the photo. If you click on location-closeup, you will go the Plant Distribution application for this plant, showing the location of this observation record. This is an easy way to see if there are other observations of the same plant nearby. Click on the Plant Observation Entry link to see all of the information the contributor added to this record. (Plant Observation Entry is the observation editor application.) To view this observation in its spatial and ecological context, there are two links at the bottom of the page. The What Grows Here? link shows which other plants grow near the location of this observation. The Observation Search link shows other observations that have been made near the location of this observation. |
© 2018 Mary Conway |
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Map Background Layers
The various mapping applications can show a number of background layers, or polygon sets.
These include Accumulated Temperature, Growing Season, December Low, July High, and Temperature Range (all derived from data from the Prism Climate Group) and various soil factors (eg. pH, Salinity) from the NRCS SSURGO database. |
HELP
With the Annual Precipitation layer showing, click on the map to see the annual preciptation at that point. 
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| Entering Observations | |||||||||
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Observer Pro Smart Phone Application
for Android and iOS devices.
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Help and Support for using Observer Pro My Calflora / Preferences / Using Observer Pro as an Independent
An external GPS device is highly recommended for increasing accuracy. See this article: Define your own plant lists for use in the smart phone applications. |
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Plant Observation Entry (POE)
to view, enter or edit a plant observation record.
Photos can be uploaded directly from your computer to become part of your observation record. If your photo is already on the web you can add the URL of the photo to an observation record.
If you have a geotagged photo, and you add it to a new record, POE will extract the location and the date from the photo. DETAILS |
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Multiple Photo Upload
to transform photos of plants into observations. If a photo is geotagged, the software will pick up the location.
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Survey / Checklist Entry
to enter a survey or a checklist (many plants observed at one location).
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Observation Upload
to upload an entire dataset directly into the database.
Copy and paste from a spreadsheet, or upload a shapefile. During the process, you assign fields in the dataset being uploaded to fields in the Calflora database. |
HELP
When you upload a shapefile, the server will take it apart and return the data to this application. Then you assign the attributes from the shapefile to database fields.
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| Contributor Services | |||||||||||||||
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Email Alerts
You can be notified by email whenever new observation records show up in the database. For instance, you might want to be alerted when any new observation of a certain plant shows up in a certain area.
To set up an alert, first use Observation Search to search for the plants you are interested in, in the area you are interested in. Then open TOOLS / SAVED SEARCHES, and save your search by name. Then go to My Calflora / Alerts. You will see the search you just saved in the table of AVAILABLE SEARCHES. Click on that search, and choose whether you want the alert every week or every month. See also the My Calflora Help page Here is an example of an alert, sent on September 1, 2016, for Observations of Mimulus species with photos:
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If you are a member of the group, you can use any one of these saved searches as an email alert. |
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Comment on Observations
There is a comment system for observations. If you are registered as a contributor, you can add a comment on any observation record.
If you come across an observation where the plant identification looks wrong, or it seems like the plant is growing in someon's garden, put a comment on it! You will be helping with Calflora's overall quality control. From My Calflora / Comments, you can look up all the comments you have made, or all the comments others have made about your observations. |
Informed comments can be a helpful source of feedback to the person responsible for an observation.
For legacy observation data (where the observer is no longer accessible), comments help Calflora get erroneous records out of public view. |
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Customize your Calflora Experience
My Calflora / Preferences:
If you have added photos to your Calflora observations, you can choose to let others use your photo according to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). This only applies to photos attached to published observations.. You can also specify your own center point for observations. This becomes the starting point for various applications, including Plant Observation Entry, My Observations, and Observation Search. (If you haven't specified a center point, these applications start near Fresno.)
If you belong to groups, you can specify a default group for all new observations you make with a phone app.
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My Observations
to review, edit and publish your observations.
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Plant List Definition
Use this application to define your own plant lists to be used in search applications (Observation Search, What Grows Here?) and the phone applications.
Cut and paste a list of plant names from anywhere. The application accepts older scientific names, and resolves them to current Calflora names. (As of November, 2018) If you enter just a genus in a plant list, it will be resolved to all native plants in that genus. Certain special purpose plant lists are available for all users. The Monarch Nectar plant list is a work in progress. If you are aware of other wild plants that Monarchs use for nectar, anywhere in California, native or not, please write to us. |
HELP
Press Illustrated Plant List for a printable version of a list -- three photos for each plant. 
Monarch caterpillar on narrowleaf milkweed, Asclepias fscicularis, © 2016 Glen Schneider |
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Observation Download
to search for and download observations in a variety of formats.
Shapefiles are available as an Output Format. Choose from Shapefile: point, Shapefile: line, or Shapefile: polygon. |
HELP
Search for records of a particular plant, set Output Format = KML and press Download File to view the results in Google Earth. If there are any lines or polygons in the results, you will be able to see them in Google Earth. Example: Saccharum ravennae (ravennagrass) including lines and polygons from UC Davis McLaughlin Reserve. |
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| Searching for Places | ||
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Great Places to view California native plants
The Great Places application shows places in California which are particularly good for viewing native plants. The search page shows the number of acres and the density (native species per acre) for each place.
If you have already made a bunch of observations with photos in a particular area, then that area would probably make an excellent Great Place. The places can include both wild locations and gardens where natives have been planted. There are three component applications: a home/search page, a page about a particular place, and an editor for adding a new place page. 
© 2015 Marin County Parks Fern Canyon Area, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park 
© 2014 William Flaxington |
© 2008 Graham Bothwell. |
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Place Name Search
to search for places in California by name, and show them on a map.
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Survey / Checklist Search
to search through all available checklists and surveys, and show the results on a map.
Example: Checklists in San Diego County Click through to see any checklist as an Illustrated Plant List -- it is printable, and suitable for use as a field guide. |
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| Plant Information | |||||
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Planting Guide
Use this application to search for native plants likely to grow well at your chosen location. Click on the map to indicate the location, press SEARCH, and the results will show commercially available native plants appropriate to the elevation, climate and soil of the chosen site.
If there is an important existing plant at the location, and you want to choose other plants that grow with that plant, open When you are seeing a good plant list, you can download it as a spreadsheet or email it to yourself, and then forward it to native plant nurseries to find out what they have in stock. The TOOLS menu also includes a Download spreadsheet link. Here is an example: 
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Location Suitability
From the Taxon Report page for the plant, click on the link to go to the Location Suitability page. Click on the map to indicate the location of your garden. Scan the third column, "LOCATION VALUES", to see if there are any pink warnings indicating location values outside of the tolerances of the plant.
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Taxon Report
Watch this
 VIDEO describing the Taxon Report page.
The Taxon Report page is now mobile friendly. If you view it on a narrow width device such as a phone or tablet, it will adapt to show the most important information in a single long column. The map on the Taxon Report page indicates plant presence by means of points and quads (instead of by colored counties). The map shows elevation in colors inspired by a classic USGS map. Mouse over the map to see county names, and click on the map to see all records from that county in Observation Search. From the Taxon Report page, there are prominent links to
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PlantID.net
PlantID.net is a website which offers help in identifying wild plants in Calfornia. It has a really good search feature: from the top page, you can enter any of the following:
plant type (eg. "shrub") flower shape flower color leaf shape The Calflora Taxon Report page also has a link to the PlantID.net page for the same plant, for those plants now covered by PlantID.net. The link is in the More Information section; for instance Arctostaphylos canescens. |
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Plant Characteristics and Associations
This page shows the climate and soil tolerances of a plant (the conditions under which the plant will grow). Press the Location Suitability link on this page to match plant tolerances with the climate and soil factors of a particular location.
From the Taxon Report page for a particular plant, press the Plant Characteristics link in the center. The climate factor, Accumulated Temperature helps to distinguish very hot places from moderately hot places. Also, the factor fomerly known as Warm Months has been recalculated and re-named Growing Season. Climate factors are mostly based on data from the Prism Climate Group at Oregon State University. Taken together, they describe the local climate of various locations in California. By extension, the climate tolerances of a particular plant can be inferred from values of the factors at locations where the plant is known to grow.
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HELP
Visualization (shading) of a dramatic change in accumulated temperature: from Mt. San Jacinto to Palm Springs
This also page shows what other organisms are associated with a plant, both beneficial and pest. Data about native bees and other beneficial insects are from the XERCES SOCIETY. EXAMPLES:
Eriogonum umbellatum, sulphur buckwheat
Artemisia californica, coastal sage brush |
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Beneficial Insects: Those plants known to be particularly attractive to beneficial insects are marked with a butterfly icon. |
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Plant Distribution
indicates the range of a plant by highlighting watersheds where the plant has been observed. It can also show point locations.
From the Taxon Report page for a particular plant, press the Distribution Grid link. The watershed polygons are colored to indicate possible vs. confirmed range. For instance, this page for Vaccinium ovatum, evergreen huckleberry. 
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HELP
This application can show shape data (lines and polygons) when available. The grid is an interesting way to bring point data and shape data together on the same map, at whatever scale.
Here is an example polygon for a weed in Marin Co.:
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Bloom Period
is shown on over 9,000+ Taxon Report pages. (See this note for more about bloom period and the sources of the data.) For example, see this page for Madia elegans.
An illustrated plant list can also show bloom period, and sort by the bloom start month. The Advanced Search for Plants application supports searching by a bloom month; for instance, plants that bloom during June. |
Madia elegans, common Madia 2011-8-31 Lassen Co.© 2011 Orrin Winton |
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Calflora on Social Media
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Note that Calflora posts on these social media sites in order to highlight the work of Calflora contributors and partners, and to introduce users to Calflora tools and features.
It is our intention that all of the information we post be accurate. If you notice something that appears inaccurate, please contact Calflora support. |
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| Working with Other Organizations | ||
| CNDDB | ||
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The California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) is a program within the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) that tracks the status and locations of rare plants and animals in California. The CNDDB is used by federal and state agencies, private consultants, and conservation organizations and is an essential tool for evaluating rare species conservation in California. Please visit the CNDDB website for additional information.
2020 January
Observation Sharing, and check the box to share original coordinates of obscured records with CNDDB, or check the box to share private records with CNDDB. CNDDB staff have a special way to extract records that have been shared in this way.
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| Technical Notes | |||||||
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2020 June:
2019 August:
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2019 February:
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2018 September:
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2018 September:
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See also Web Applications for Invasives |
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| Historical Notes | ||
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Is Calflora being taken over by weeds? September, 2011 Summary of: 2009 - 2008 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005 Contributor Hall-of-Fame October, 2009 Testimonials April, 2003 Goals And Achievements February, 2003 |
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Iron Mountain and Ellie Lane Trails, Poway