You can create a flower search using the Flower Finder page by clicking the radio buttons in each of the seven different plant characteristics. Once you have made your choices you run the search by tapping the "Search" button. The plants that match your search are presented on a Search Results page consisting of small pictures (thumbnails) showing each of the matching plants. Each thumbnail can be tapped to see more details of that plant. The thumbnails are arranged by plant families, as described here.
In each case the "Ignore" choice means that that particular characteristic will not be used in the search. For example, in the color characteristic the "Ignore" choice means that flowers of all colors will be included in the search results. Choose this if you don't know or don't care about the characteristic. Note that selecting the default choice of "Ignore" for all seven search criteria will match all of the plants on this site and will generate a search result that has all of the approximately 350 plants on this web site.
The search results are presented in batches of roughly 100 plants per page. We've done this because small hand-held devices can bottom out their limited resources if they try to load too much content at once. Typically, devices deal with resource starvation by forcing apps to exit. Devices with a lot of apps running in the background are most likely to see these sorts of spontaneous forced exits.
Flowers that can bloom in more than one color will appear in the search results for each of their possible colors (although this site may not have pictures that show all of these possibilities.) This can lead to a picture of a yellow flower showing up with the search results for the white flowers. This is by design and is not an error. Similarly, the deliberate overlap in the color designations means both the "Red" characteristic and the "Blue" characteristic will show flowers of the secondary color purple. If you are curious, we have written some additional comments about color.
These size groupings are approximate with flowers near the borderlines being included in both size groups. For the purpose of this search consider the head of a member of the sunflower family a single flower (more about sunflowers).
The three groups are:
Is the flower on a stalk of its own or is it part of a larger grouping of flowers? It is often easier to correctly determine that a plant has clusters of flowers than solitary flowers. Be cautious when choosing the solitary characteristic since a plant normally displaying clusters may appear solitary if only one flower of the cluster is currently blooming. In many cases where there might be confusion we have set the plant to appear in the results for both types of search.
For the purpose of this search consider the head of a member of the sunflower family a single flower rather than a cluster (more about sunflowers).
We define simply shaped to mean the flower has a rotational symmetry. This describes flowers with an over-all shape which is round, wheel, tubular, urn, cup, or bell like. Note that when using this characteristic, it applies only to the individual flowers, not to the shape of any clusters of flowers. For example, many people might be tempted to apply this shape characteristic to the simply-shaped, large, round cluster of flowers typical of many clovers, rather than the cluster's oddly-shaped, tiny, individual flowers.
We define oddly shaped to mean the flower has a mirror symmetry or no obvious symmetry at all (show me some examples of flower shapes.)
Some flowers may look superficially simple, but a closer examination would reveal that they actually have mirror symmetry rather than rotational symmetry. We have tried to include these borderline cases in the results for both types of searches. For the purpose of this search consider the head of a member of the sunflower family a single flower (more about sunflowers).
The woody plants are trees, shrubs, and some vines. Woody plants are always perennial. An herbaceous plant does not produce woody, persistent tissue and generally dies back at the end of each growing season. Annual plants are always herbaceous. However, herbaceous plants can be either perennial or annual. Finally, the first year's growth of a woody plant is often herbaceous. Confused yet? Unless it is obviously woody it might be best to ignore.
It is unlikely you will know if a flower is a native or non-native unless you are already familiar with it. Choose "Ignore" if you don't know.
| Winter: | January to February |
| Early Spring: | February to May |
| Late Spring: | May to July |
| Summer: | July to November |
| Fall: | November to January |
These Seasons should be thought of as "typical" blooming seasons rather than precise definitions of blooming times. There are a number of reasons for this uncertainty. The blooming season can shift greatly from year to year depending on weather patterns. Habitat plays a big role in determining the blooming time as well. For example, a plant growing on an exposed south face of a hill generally begins blooming and finishes much earlier than the same plant growing on a shaded north face.
Many plants bloom for a relatively brief period of time and consequently one should not expect any given species to be blooming throughout the duration of the season in which it is listed. If conditions are favorable some plants may experience additional blooming seasons later in the year. Indeed, some plants will bloom almost year-round if provided a dependable water source. We frequently see plants flowering outside of the seasons listed here, but unless this sighting includes a large number of individuals we do not use that as justification to expand the "typical" blooming season.
Finally, we often do not have reliable data about typical flowering seasons here in Southern California. In many cases we have consulted multiple conflicting sources and, in the end, made an informed best guess of a "typical" blooming season.
The philosophy we have employed here it to be restrictive rather than be expansive in defining the typical blooming season. For example, a plant that generally blooms from May to July we have listed as blooming in "Late Spring" and have not listed it as blooming in "Summer" even though we have also defined July as a summer month. Therefore, one needs to keep in mind that any "Late Spring" flower might well be found blooming in early "Summer," especially during a cool wet year.
There are a number of characteristics one might wish to search for that are not available in the seven characteristics of the Flower Finder. We have pre-prepared a few of these special searches and provided links to them near the bottom of the Flower Finder page. They include: