Wildflowers

of the

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

Updated 6-22-09. Add the ability to search on the flowering season. General Notes: This site was designed to work best with a monitor resolution of 800x600. If you have difficulty reading the text you can try changing the text size displayed in your browser by going to its menu and clicking "View" and then "Text Size." Access to the plants available on this site is by way of a large table of links or through the Flower Finder. The table of links is organized as a set of three lists sorted alphabetical by either scientific name, common name or family. If your browser supports tool tips you can use your mouse to "hover" over an entry in the table to cross-reference the names. All of the species on this site are available in this table, including the grasses and the ferns. These links lead to a web page featuring details of the plant listed. It is also possible to access the grasses or the ferns through their own separate table of links. Because of the large size of this table it can be quicker to find the plant you want by searching for its name rather than scrolling through the lists. Most web browsers support searching the current web page (often called "finding") via the Edit menu or by pressing the key combination Ctrl-F (i.e., pressing the "Control" key and the "F" key simultaneously) Each web page featuring a flower includes the scientific name, the family name, and at least one common name. In addition, we provide the approximate location, habitat, and date for the plant that was photographed. If more than one common name is given we will capitalize the one which we have cross-referenced to the scientific name. In the case of the scientific names we will generally use the one listed in the Jepson Manual, but in some cases may use a more currently accepted name. An asterisk (*) denotes an established non-native. The links to the Next Species and Previous Species at the top of each page are to the next or previous flower as ordered by scientific name sorted by families. The thumbnail pages generated by the searches available through the Flower Finder may have many pictures on them (in some cases several hundred pictures.) These large web pages can take several minutes to load over a slow internet connection. Depending on the settings of your web browser, this can lead to a "time-out" situation where some pictures may fail to load. In that case you can try refreshing the page, or alternatively, right click a missing picture and choosing 'Show Picture'. The arrangement of the thumbnails is alphabetically by families and then by scientific name. The "Compact Version" of the Flower Finder is for users who do not need the notes to help them make selections. A final note about the Flower Finder is that it requires JavaScript to operate. If it is disabled in your web browser then noting will happen when you click the "Submit Search" button (it is unlikely that this will be a problem since almost all web browsers have this enabled by default.) When photographing the thumbnail pictures the camera was frequently positioned as close to the flower as possible, occasionally resulting in a greatly enlarged view of the flower. In plants with a large inflorescence we usually tried to focus on a single flower while still retaining enough of the inflorescence to indicate that it exists. Clicking on a thumbnail picture will open the page specific to that flower with at least one additional higher-resolution picture. All pictures and photomicrographs containing a measurement grid employ a 1mm scale unless otherwise noted. If you have comments or questions please contact e-mail: Tony_Valois@partner.nps.gov phone: 310-457-6408 [ NPS Home ] [ Santa Monica Mountains NRA Home ] [ What's Blooming ]