Developed by Bruce Homer-Smith and the California Native Plant Society, PlantID.net is a non-commercial website designed to help you identify California plants found in the wild. Enter what you observe about the plant and your location, and it will produce a short annotated list of possibilities.
Contribute to science: become a citizen scientist! The iNaturalist app, created by the CA Academy of Sciences, enables you to record observations out in the field, upload them into a worldwide database and share with fellow naturalists. If you don’t know what it is, the app will make suggestions, as will a crowd of user experts.
Found a mushroom, flower, or bug, and not sure what it is? Open up the Seek camera to see if it knows. It will show you lists of commonly recorded insects, birds, plants, amphibians, and more in your area. Based on the extensive database of observations submitted around the world through iNaturalist.
CALSCAPE, developed by the California Native Plant Society, is designed to enable homeowners and landscapers select and find the native plants that are the best fit for any particular location in the state. It is truly a one-stop site for growing California native plants. A powerful search feature shows which plants are really native to any location in the state, and helps homeowners and landscapers figure out which ones they want, where to buy them, and how to grow them. With this website, you can drill down to the most appropriate native plant by type (tree, shrub, etc.) for a given location: for example, a low-water shrub for part-shade. Each plant entry includes photos that show the plant in many forms, a narrative and summary description, the wildlife it supports including butterfly and moth caterpillars for which it is a host plant, and plant care information. Finally, it lists nurseries that carry the plant.
The website maintained by the state offices of the California Native Plant Society offers extensive resources under the tab: Our Work/Gardening. In addition to the great plant database, Calscape, they have virtual garden tours for inspiration, information on nurseries that carry native plants, design basics, details on how to plant, water and mulch, how to deal with pests, plus a very useful set of articles on pruning native plants. Definitely worth exploring.
Truly specific to our region with lots of details on local species. The book also has good introductory information on butterflies, life histories, how to raise caterpillars, and local plants.