Plants of the San Gabriel Mountains: Foothills and Canyons

Interpretive Guide on CD

Reviewed by Norman Ackerman

(reprinted with permission from the The Paintbrush, January-February 2009, California Native Plant Society, San Gabriel Mountains Chapter)

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This is a terrific CD full of information, and after you've used it for about a week you will begin to discover how much interesting detail is packed into many nookS and crannieS. You can return from a hike an use a built-in quick search feature for the blue flowers blooming in July and there's even a quiz for students of all levels. Get this CD! (Mickey Long)

Home gardeners as well as landscapers, botanists and other professionals will find this easy-to-use resource to contain a wide variety of information about our native plants. This mini-encyclopedia includes 258 plants, 1600 photos (many appear in this Paintbrush), and much more.

Don't let the name of the CD dissuade you from buying it; most of the plants are found over much of California, not just in the San Gabriel Mountains.

So let's start with where and how to buy it.

The CD is structured like a website with menus, submenus, menubars and links that allow you to explore it and easily find exactly the information you want.

When you start, you will see the menu in Figure 1. Click on any choice in Figure 1, and you get a submenu and an adjacent area of information about that topic. For example, if you clicked on Plant Community in Figure 1, you would see the submenu in Figure 2. Then if you click on Chaparral, the submenu in Figure 2 will expand to list the plants in the Chaparral community. Figure 3 is a self-explanatory menubar that appears on many screens.

When you select a specific plant, you will see a screen with multiple photos of the plant. You will aso see another munubar containing a set of buttons, selected from the following list, that relate to that plant. Click on a button, and a screen full of information on that topic appears.

	General description of the plant
	Leaf characteristics
	Stem and leaf descriptions
	Trunk and needle information for conifers
	Flower descriptions, inflorescence, when it blooms
	Fruit type and appearance
	Cone description, male & female
	Ferns: Descrip[tion of fronds & reproductive parts
	Habitat: Plant communities, terrain, elevations
	Range: Geographic regions & map of the range
	Related species
	Gardening: Basic requirements of the plant
	Birds: How to attract, how they use the plants
	Butterflies: how to attract, how they use the plants
	Fire Effects: Response, contribution after-effects
	Name changes and meaning of the name
	New name changes

The sound button stands alone on the page. Click it and you'll hear the botanical name pronounced.

There's much more, including these other major topics on this CD which remain to be explored:

• Natural History Information: Geography, Geology, Mediterranean Climate, Fire, Plant Adaptations, Plant Communities, Birds and Plants, Butterflies and Plants, Threats to Wildlands
• Gardening with Natives: How Do I get Started?, How Should I water?, What about Maintenance?, Where Can I find Native Plants?
• Botany Basics: Parts of a Vascular Plant, Leaf Illustrations, Flowering Plants, Conifers, Ferns and Fern Allies, Plant Names