Plant Profiles

More and more, land managers are striving to place the right plants, in the right place, at the right time, to ensure sustainability of our natural resources. The RCRCD has partnered with local and federal agencies, restoration companies, universities, land conservancies, non-profit groups, and seed companies to develop lists of native plants of primary importance to seeding and re-vegetation projects in southern California. Partners identified a critical need for information to help guide them in the selection of species and to identify where to collect genetically appropriate seeds for particular planting sites. The RCRCD is creating plant profiles to fill this need. The profiles include information that will help guide choices of species and seed sources for restoration and other native planting projects within sensitive habitats and conservation lands, with a focus on species that form the backbone of coastal sage scrub, low-elevation chaparral, and alluvial scrub plant communities.

Alluvial Scrub, Sage Scrub, and Chaparral Native Plant Materials Project

Staff collects information about native plants and the Restoration Ecologist prepares plant profiles that focus on use of plants for habitat restoration. The collaborative project was funded by the USDA Forest Service Native Plant Materials Program and a Pacific Southwest Research Station internal grant program. Staff is also working on species distribution modeling and climate change forecasting of future habitat suitability for many shrub species to help guide the sourcing of plant materials for restoration projects. Results are being incorporated into outreach materials to be made available online.

For a subset of the profiles, information from recent work by Dr. Arlee Montalvo, former Senior Plant Restoration Ecologist (RCRCD), Dr. Erin Riordan, Postdoctoral Intern (RCRCD) and Assistant Project Scientist (University of California Los Angeles), and Dr. Jan Beyers, Research Ecologist, US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW), on how climate change is projected to affect species distributions was included. They generated species distribution models and modeled regional patterns of suitable habitat under baseline (1951–1980) and midcentury (2040–2069) climate conditions for 44 focal plant taxa under five future climate scenarios. The profile and modeling projects were funded by the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region Plant Materials Program, the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, and the RCRCD. The resulting publication, is called Using species distribution models with climate change scenarios to aid ecological restoration decision making for southern California shrublands ( (Riordan, Erin C.; Montalvo, Arlee M.; Beyers, Jan L.).

For comments, corrections, offers of photographs or additional data, or offers of funding to support more profile work, please contact Arlee Montalvo (montalvo@ucr.edu or amontalvo@cnps.org).

The plant profiles are in a tabular format with fields containing ecological, taxonomic, distribution, and genetic information to help botanists and land managers determine collection protocols and seed deployment strategies. They also contain details about seed biology and plant culture to help guide choice and production of plant materials in a way that reduces the chance for unintentional selection, loss of genetic diversity, or cross contamination of seed resources. The profiles provide important information about the differences among subspecies and varieties of focal species. Each profile is fully documented by providing links to important referenced databases and a bibliography at the end of the PDF file.

The following species were prioritized for profiles. The names in blue font have profiles that are complete and ready for download. Click on the name to obtain the desired file. More profiles will be added as they are completed so do check for updates. Updated profiles will have the update year after the name. For example those for California sagebrush, deerweed, black sage, and white sage, were updated in 2017 to reflect new information. The urls within all profiles were last updated in March 2020.