Re: best site for ID of plants?

Title: Re: best site for ID of plants?
Loretta,

The best starting point for new gardeners in California is the Sunset Western Garden Book.  A new edition will be out in January, with many more plants and photos of many of them.  In the meantime, I recommend that you get yourself a copy of The American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.  It is not perfect, but it is by far the most comprehensive single plant identification reference available today.  I know of no single web site that comes anywhere near it for cultivated plants in general.  The Sunset book gives many common names.  For those not there you can usually find the botanical name equivalent in the "Index of Common Names" in the back of Hortus III.  There are probably more kinds of plants to be found in California nurseries than anywhere else on Earth, and no single reference can cover them all.

Nurseries with good web sites that offer a wide range of plants include Monterey Bay Nursery at:

http://montereybaynsy.com/

Also, try Native Sons Nursery at:

http://www.nativeson.com/home2.html

San Marcos Growers also has a good site, although not as many pictures:

http://www.smgrowers.com/webcat.htm

For a different range of plants, consult the site of Plants of the Southwest:

http://www.plantsofthesouthwest.com/

For California native plants, Cal Flora is unsurpassed:

http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/calflora/

It also might help to enter the name you have for a plant into Google.com and see what comes up.  In my experience, this is the best organized and most comprehensive search engine.  After spending many hours comparing it with dozens of other engines, I use it constantly in my plant research--both for the Sunset Western Garden Book and for other writing projects or personal interest.

I would emphasize that there is no quick fix for ignorance.  No one I know is familiar with all the plants that are currently grown in California's gardens and offered in its nurseries, and people in local nurseries are seldom among the most knowledgeable.  It is going to take some serious effort on your part to identify your plants and figure out the best conditions to grow each of them.  That's part of the fun of gardening.   The above suggestions should help.  Good luck!


John MacGregor
jonivy@earthlink.net


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From: loretta gerity jacobs <lorettagerity@home.com>
To: medit-plants <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: best site for ID of plants?
Date: Wed, Oct 11, 2000, 5:12 PM


I'm deep into fall gardening, and that includes buying plants that I see, most of which aren't labeled very well. I can't even find out, sometimes, if it's a perennial (sp), native, or what.
I wonder where medit-persons look to identify plants. (Ha! You guys probably don't need to ID plants, you already know them more than most nursery personel.)
If I could impose upon you all to point me in the direction, or which web-site where you would go to ID a plant that you only had the name of, and sometimes it's not even the right name, it's a more common name. Like, "princess flower", or some such nonsense.
I hope this makes sense.
Thanks in advance,
loretta in fairfax
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