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VENTURA COUNTY FLORA This page provides a link to a complete list of the Flora of all the plants known and expected to occur within the geographic boundaries of Ventura County, California. This is the first complete checklist of vascular plants ever published. The statistics of flora of Ventura County are provided on the Floristics page. Below is a link to a PDF listing of 2,731 native (indigenous), naturalized (originated elsewhere but now growing "naturally"), and escaped exotics (planted taxa that have escaped cultivation and surviving without care) vascular plant taxa. Today there are 2,679 taxa have been vouchered (collections made and deposited into one or more public herbaria), with the remaining 49 being observed or reported but not supported by a voucher specimen. The number will certainly change tomorrow as botanists continue to explore and study the natural landscape of Ventura County. The checklist includes: scientific name (complete with author(s)), common name, growth habit, wetland indicator status, family, and its current abundance status (in one of 5 categories (common, occasional, scattered, uncommon, and rare - listed in decreasing order). About half of the native plant taxa in Ventura County are uncommon (6-10 populations) to rare (1-5 populations).
The checklist includes: scientific name (complete with author(s)), common name, growth habit, wetland indicator status, family, and its current abundance status (in one of 5 categories (common, occasional, scattered, uncommon, and rare - listed in decreasing order). About half of the native plant taxa in Ventura County are uncommon (6-10 populations) to rare (1-5 populations). SANTA CLARA (UTOM) RIVER WATERSHED FLORA A 4-year study of the Santa Clara (Utom) River watershed was just completed by the California Native Plant Society, lead by David Magney as CNPS's California Floristics Specialist. The study, funded by a grant from the Utom River Conservation Fund that is co-managed by CNPS, Center for Biological Diversity, Wishtoyo Foundation, and the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash. The watershed includes much of Ventura County and the northwestern portion of Los Angeles County. This study has also increased the knowledge of the flora of Ventura County. Utom is the Chumash name for the Santa Clara River. The Utom River watershed is 2,023,358 acres, larger than that of Ventura County. The watershed is habitat to 2,356 vascular plant taxa. That is a few hundred species less than known for Ventura County; however, the Utom River watershed does not include any islands, which adds a significant number of taxa to the Ventura County flora. The resulting report on the botanical resources of the Utom River watershed is downloadable here and provides a summary of the vascular plant flora of the watershed and of each of the 54 bioregions that comprises the watershed. Many of those bioregions are the same as those created as part of the research on the flora of Ventura County, extending the bioregion approach eastward into adjacent Los Angeles County. The report includes a checklist of all the vascular plants occurring in the watershed and are supported by one or more voucher specimens. Also included in the botanical resources report is a summary and maps of each of the 54 bioregions, listed alphabetially, as well as a matrix table checklist of how many times each vascular plant was documented within each bioregion.
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The Ventura County Flora is a product and service of David Magney Environmental Consulting.