The Inspiration for Floralore...

"A scientific interest in at least certain features of our natural environment, as for example the trees, shrubs or herbaceous plants, directs one to useful and agreeable intellectual activity. Accurate and detailed knowledge of even a small area lifts the possessor out of the commonplace and enables him directly or indirectly to contribute to the well-being and happiness of his community."
— Willis Jepson, Trees of California, 1921

Floralore is Undergoing Changes

After a few years of accumulating data, I can now stand back and see where I’m going off course and where I want to put in more effort. Here are some changes I will be making:

• There was a time when Calflora looked like it wouldn’t survive without adequate funding! My notion was to try building a poor substitute for El Dorado County information with lists of EDC Plant Families (not too hard) and species photos. Now a few years later, that is never going to happen with one man’s effort. I am going to concentrate on only the plants which have updated names. That I can handle.

• I’ve always enjoyed leaning not just botanical names, but also digging up where the botanical names came from? There are some amusing origens, and knowing something of the Latin or Greek root words is useful too. I’ll be adding more of that stuff. After all, that is the lore of Floralore. More botanical trivia, coming soon.

• I’m surprised that some of the most popular pages (according to Google) are the pages about unusual soils: serpentine soil at Traverse Creek, and gabbro soil of Pine Hill. I’ll be working to add more info to those pages. I sure wish somebody would ever drop me a note to tell me if they found something they wanted to know?

• In 2007 I found butterflies were a new reason to head out for a day of Nature. I so much enjoyed what I was finding that I added the Butterfly Gallery to display my photos. Now it turns out that butterfly photos are among the most popular searches. I will be making big changes and additions to the butterfly pages.

So Welcome to Floralore!

Tip: There are two kinds of links used: yellow-highlighted tidbits are pop-up comments for quick reading when you roll the cursor over them; links to off-site pages are standard blue.

Disclaimer No. 1:

While I am not a trained botanist, I do consider myself an amateur scientist; the word "amateur" comes from Latin, amar, to love, and “science” is from a Latin root which means to know, to learn; an amateur scientist simply loves to learn. We should all be scientists at some level.

Disclaimer No. 2:

This site is mostly concerned the plants of El Dorado County, California, but it also includes information from around northern California in general (e.g., Habitats). If you are outside this area, I am hoping that much of the information will still be of interest.

Please E-mail me with any comments,

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