Flora of Southern California: Master Checklist

On 21 February 2012, I began putting my Master Checklist of southern California plants online, as part of the process of updating my database to the 2012 Second Edition Jepson Manual (JM2) system. It will take some months to complete the process, as I systematically go through the JM2 page by page, comparing it to my database and the 1993 First Edition (JM1) system.

As I complete each major section, which could be anything from a single family like Asteraceae, or group of families, I'll put that part of the list online.

The list contains all plant species known to occur in southern California, native and non-native, whether or not the JM2 states that a species is found in a geographic region of southern California.

The area defined as southern California corresponds to the union of two JM2 geographic ranges: the Southwestern California Region (SW) and the Desert Province (D) (see map of these regions shown as part of the Bebbia juncea treatment).

The list will mark all the changes between the JM1 and JM2 system, to alert us all where changes have been made, with a "^" symbol after the changed name. Most of the changes are simple 1-to-1 name changes for either the family or scientific name. Changes that are more complex will be given in more detail on a separate page.

The list will be presented in JM2 order, divided into the eight major clades of vascular plants as detailed inside the back cover of the JM2.

The number of taxa is also given, the number of total entries (which includes the species name as well as subspecies names) and the number of ultimate taxa (not including the species name when there are subspecies), separated by native and non-native species.

Each entry also gives the number of observations (column header #Obs) in my database from plant trail guides and floras that I've done, and the number of checklists (column header #Lists) that I've digitized, that contain each entry. This gives an immediate idea of how common a given taxon is, albeit filtered strongly by the areas I've concentrated on: The Borrego Desert; San Jacinto Mountain higher elevations; the San Gabriel Mountains; and the Santa Rosa Plateau.

Hence a taxa with zero observations and zero digitized plant floras may just be uncommon or absent from the areas represented in my field work. For example, taxa from Death Valley will have zeros for both of those numbers since I haven't botanized there or digitized a flora from there. But if I had worked heavily on the flora of Death Valley, many of the taxa found there would have large numbers in those columns.

Each taxon in each list has links from its Scientific Name to the JM2 online entry, which includes:

• the JM2 keys and descriptions, with a list of all species found in a given genus or family, not just those found in southern California (no illustrations are online yet);

• a geographic map of the JM2 distribution;

• a plot of voucher locations, along with a shaded geographic area that fits the JM2 geographic and elevational distributions and hence indicates the potential geographic range for each taxon;

• a plot of elevation vs. latitude for vouchers, which is often a very instructive graph showing the change in the elevation range for each taxon with latitude; and

• a histogram of voucher collection by month, which often indicates when a taxon was in an identifiable state, either in bloom or in fruit.

Some links to the JM2 online entry will return no JM2 online entry, since hybrids, and the taxa mentioned as judgment-reserved taxa, are not yet entered into the JM2 name index. Those links may work in the future.

Each taxon in each list has links from its Common Name to the Calphotos pictures. Since some taxa have no photos at Calphotos, those links will return no pictures. Be aware that the names in Calphotos are not synonymized, which means that if the name has changed in the JM2, all the Calphotos may still be under the JM1 name, and will not be retrieved by this link.

An asterisk in front of the Common Name indicates a non-native taxon.

The Master Checklist

Clade	Native Taxa		Non-Native Taxa		Total Taxa
	Entries	Ultimate Taxa	Entries	Ultimate Taxa	Entries	Ultimate Taxa
Lycopods and Ferns	79	76	8	8	87	84

Go to:

• Plants of Southern California: Regional Floras