California

Sedges can be enigmatic and inscrutable for many of us. There's such an expansive diversity of species that it can be a bit confounding not only to...

Ornate and improbable…a wild lupine with flowers that can be purple, pink, cream, and yellow all at the same time… Endemic to disjunct, dry, slopin...

We know a spot...a mowed, grassy parking lot, of thin, sandy, compacted soil. It’s a place where saltwater from the close-by beach saturates the ro...

This is sometimes one of the earlier emerging Western milkweeds, and certainly one of the especially visually striking species – with magenta/wine-...

Soft, beautiful, bristly, bluish-silver, mostly unfazed by drought and hard times…Idaho fescue is maybe the most significant grass of western North...

With deep, inky blue-purple flowers, this is a wildflower of ridiculous beauty. Moreover, it’s a fascinating bumble bee pollinated plant with bloss...

A fantastic garden cover crop and magnet for bees and syrphid flies. Lacy phacelia is largely a California species, but wild populations do occasio...

This is one of the lesser common things in our inventory, an oddly plain, and yet uncanny plant -- something of a mystery --but one dripping with l...

Watch bumble bees gather fluorescent blue pollen from this striking-looking plant!  This is one of our favorite annual wildflowers for that tough c...

Dreamy and dazzling – Large-headed clover arises from diminutive 6-inch-tall foliage…from terrible, rocky, low-fertility soils, and dry weather… fr...

Short and lovely, maiden clover is a friend to bees. It’s also a host plant to seemingly innumerable species of butterflies and moths -- including ...

One of the most adaptable native grasses for meadow landscaping. This is one of the first grasses we recommend for people trying to incorporate nat...

The most mysterious of prairie wildflowers Burdened with various unflattering alternative common names, this is among the most enchanting and myste...

The most vibrant population of Menzies’ larkspur we’ve ever encountered was in a low, sandy coastal back dune, a stone’s throw from a small acrid-s...

Miner’s lettuce is a succulent springtime annual reaching up to about 1-foot in height with interesting paired leaves that conjoin around the stem ...

A Pacific coast form of creeping red fescue for lush, soft, exuberant wild lawns – and for filling gaps between other plant species. Contrasting sl...

The Great Central Plain of California…was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to th...

A plant that might outlive all of us.  Also known as California compass plant, this late-spring flowering perennial produces a thick expansive tapr...

Native from western Mexico to British Columbia, this is arguably a cornerstone of monarch butterfly breeding habitat across large sections of the I...

Native to most of North America, red fescue is a cool-season perennial, meaning it tends to go dormant in the heat of summer. While there are also ...

Rising from wet soils along the edges of ponds, vernal pools, and slow streams, this most delicate plant threads the water’s surface with fine, gre...

An excellent butterfly nectar plant. In Washington and British Columbia this handsome native mint occurs mostly east of the Cascades. Further south...

Nineleaf biscuitroot possesses a fantastically pleasing form. Structurally it’s comprised of super-attractive slender compound leaflets which look ...

A handsome and interesting fall-blooming plant for damp, and sometimes challenging locations. An annual sunflower-relative, nodding bur-marigold na...