Small Plants

Vinca

vincire

Range: native to Europe, northwest Africa and southwest Asia, but a very invasive species that has spread all over the globe.

Info: the stems of Vinca frequently take root where they touch the ground, enabling the plant to spread widely. Extensively cultivated as a flowering evergreen ornamental plant. Because the plants are low and spread quickly, they are often used as groundcover in garden landscapes and container gardens. Although attractive, both Vinca major and Vinca minor may be invasive in some regions where they are introduced species because of the rapid spreading resulting in choking out native plant species and altering habitats. Areas affected include parts of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, especially coastal California.

Fun Fact: extracts from the Vinca Genus can create the chemotherapy agent vincristine which is used to treat some leukemias, lymphomas,and childhood cancers

California Poppy

Eschscholzia californica

Range: The west coast of The United States Of America

Info: It is an ornamental plant flowering in summer, with showy cup-shaped flowers in brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow (occasionally pink). It is also used as food or a garnish.

Fun Fact: The California poppy is the California state flower.

Calla Lilly

Zantedeschia aethiopica

Range: native to southern Africa in Lesotho, South Africa, and Swaziland.

Info: Its preferred habitat is in streams and ponds or on the banks. It grows to 2.0–3.3 ft tall, with large clumps of broad, arrow shaped dark green leaves up to 18 in long. Known for its bowl-like white flowers with a yellow center.

Scarlet Keckiella

Keckiella Ternata

Range: mountains of southern California and Baja California

Info: Keckiella ternata is a shrub often exceeding two meters in height and spreading slightly with wand-like, waxy branches. The branches bear whorls of three leaves each, or oppositely arranged pairs of leaves. Each toothed, curving leaf is tapered at the base and pointed at the tip, oblong to lance-shaped, and up to 6 centimeters long.

Bear's Breeches

Acanthus mollis

Range: Bear's breeches is an old fashioned plant commonly found in traditional California gardens.

Info: A herbaceous perennial plant with an underground rhizome in the genus Acanthus. It is regarded as an invasive species in some jurisdictions. The Latin name of the species, mollis meaning "soft, smooth", refers to the texture of the leaves.

Western Poison Oak

Toxicodendron diversilobum

Range: The western poison oak can be found on the western coast of the US in California, parts of Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.

Info: In spring, the leaves can be red or green. The plant produces small flowers that are white, yellow, or green. During the summer, the leaves are green and the plant grows berries. In late summer, the leaves turn red and orange. Touching this plant will result in an allergic reaction which can spread to other parts of the body if the oils are not washed right away. The name of the allergic reaction is dermatitis which is swelling and irritation of the skin.

Fun Fact: If poison oak is used as fuel for fire, poisons can be inhaled and enter lungs which can be deadly.

Italian Arum

Arum Italicum

Range: It is native to the Mediterranean region (southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East) plus Great Britain, the Netherlands, Crimea, Caucasus, Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. It is also naturalized in Argentina and in scattered locations in the United States.

Info: It grows 1–1.5 ft high, with equal spread. It blooms in spring with white flowers that turn to showy red fruit. It is cultivated as an ornamental plant for traditional and woodland shade gardens.

Allium

Allium sativum

Range: Allium species occur in temperate climates of the Northern Hemisphere

Info: Green flat leaves coming out from the center. Large purple flowers. Allium is part of a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants that includes hundreds of species, including the cultivated onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek, and chives.

Fun Fact: Allium species are among the oldest cultivated crops.

California oatgrass

Danthonia Californica

Range: Native to California, is also found elsewhere in North America and beyond.

Info: Danthonia Californica is a clumping erect perennial bunch grass with stems approaching a meter (3 feet) in height at maximum. The leaves are flat and short and may be hairy or hairless. The inflorescence holds one or more spikelets, each spikelet holding up to eight florets. This grass grows best in moist areas, generally in thin forests and meadows.

Butterfly Iris

Dietes compressa

Range: Most species are native to southern and central Africa. A few species have become naturalized in other parts of the world.

Info: These plants were formerly placed in the genus Moraea, but were reclassified because they are rhizomatous. Like Moraea, they differ from Iris in having flowers with six free tepals that are not joined into a tube at their bases. White and purple flowers, and stems similar to that of an iris.

Thistle

Cirsium

Range: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia

Info: Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles occur all over the plant – on the stem and flat parts of leaves. They are an adaptation that protects the plant from being eaten by herbivores.

Ice Plant

Carpobrotus edulis

Range: native to South Africa, has naturalized in many other regions throughout the world, and is an invasive species in several parts, notably Australia, California and the Mediterranean, all of which have similar climates. The ice plant has escaped from cultivation and has become invasive, posing a serious ecological problem.

Info: On the Mediterranean coast, C. edulis has spread out rapidly and now parts of the coastline are completely covered by this invasive species. Moreover, another invasive species, the black rat, has been shown to enhance the spreading of the ice plant through its feces. As the ice plant represents a food resource for the rat, both benefit from each other. Ice plant foliage can turn a vibrant red to yellow in color.

Fun fact: Although the ice plant may have arrived by ship (to California) as early as the 16th century, C. edulis was actively introduced in the early 1900s to stabilize dunes and soil along railroad tracks; it was later put to use by Caltrans for ground cover along freeway embankments. Thousands of acres were planted in California until the 1970s.

Variegated Privet

ligustrum oni variegatum

Range: native to Europe, north Africa, Asia, many introduced and naturalized in Australasia.

Info: They often have conspicuous heads of white flower followed by black berries. Widely used in horticulture and flower arrangements.

Fun Fact: Privet is used in traditional herbal medicine. The decoction (the process of extracting the essence) of privet leaves or bark helps to treat diarrhea, stomach ulcers, chronic bowel problems, chapped lips, sore mouths and throats, and is a wash for skin problems. Privet leaves and bark have bitter properties that make a useful tea for improving appetite and digestion in chemotherapy patients.

Fern

Tracheophyta

Range: Geographically, ferns are most abundant in the tropics. Arctic and Antarctic regions possess few species. On the other hand, a small tropical country such as Costa Rica may have more than 900 species of ferns—about twice as many as are found in all of North America north of Mexico.

Info: A fern is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients, in having branched stems and in having life cycles in which the sporophyte is the dominant phase. Like other vascular plants, ferns have complex leaves called megaphylls that are highly complex.

Fun fact: Ferns are a very old group of plants. They first appeared on Earth in the middle Devonian Era about 360 million years ago (before the dinosaurs!), just before the Carboniferous Era.

Daffodil

Narcissus poeticus

Range: The genus arose some time in the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene epochs, in the Iberian peninsula and adjacent areas of southwest Europe.

Info: Conspicuous flowers with six petal-like tepals surmounted by a cup- or trumpet-shaped corona.

Fun fact: The exact origin of the name Narcissus is unknown, but it is often linked to a Greek word for intoxicated (narcotic) and the myth of the youth of that name who fell in love with his own reflection.

Ivy

Hedera

Range: Native to western, central and southern Europe, Macaronesia, northwestern Africa and across central-southern Asia east to Japan and Taiwan.

Info: Ivies are very popular in cultivation within their native range and compatible climates elsewhere, for their evergreen foliage, attraction to wildlife, and for adaptable design. Used in narrow planting spaces and on tall or wide walls for aesthetic addition, or to hide unsightly walls, fences and tree stumps. Numerous cultivars with variegated foliage and/or unusual leaf shapes have been selected for horticultural use.