CNDDB News Blog

This past weekend was Citizen Science Day! We’d like to take this opportunity to celebrate all the scientists and nature enthusiasts from the public who are out there collecting valuable data that would otherwise be overlooked. The CNDDB wants to utilize the power of citizen science, so we have launched our own iNaturalist project.

iNaturalist is an online platform and mobile application that allows users to record and share observations of organisms. It also serves as a social network for crowdsourcing species identification and connecting an extensive network of citizen scientists. The CNDDB created its own iNaturalist project primarily to gain access to precise coordinate locations, since the locations of most species we track are obscured by iNaturalist users or the program itself in order to protect the species. It is important to note that using iNaturalist isn’t a substitute for filling out our CNDDB field survey forms. The CNDDB field survey forms were designed to collect specific data that would meet the reporting requirements which many professional biologists and those working under a special permit are held to. If you are an iNaturalist user, please consider joining our iNaturalist project and opting in to sharing the specific location information of your rare species detections with us!

California is a biodiversity hotpot. A large part of California’s biodiversity is a result of the exceptional number of native plant species in the state. California currently boasts over 6,500 native plant taxa with about 30% of those plants occurring nowhere else in the world. In conjunction with the large number of native plants in California comes a large number of rare plants as well. The CNDDB currently tracks nearly 2,400 rare plant taxa.

To celebrate this amazing array of botanical diversity, the California State Legislature designated the third week of April to be California Native Plant Week. See the California Native Plant Society website for activities in your area or simply venture outside for a hike to take in and appreciate all the native plant diversity California has to offer!

Number of Element Occurrences in Current Distribution: 92,720
Number of New Element Occurrences Added Since Last Distribution: 360
Number of Source Documents Added: 1,505

What we've been working on:

Botany

• Amsinckia lunaris (bent-flowered fiddleneck)
• Astragalus rattanii var. jepsonianus (Jepson’s milk-vetch)
• Balsamorhiza macrolepis (big-scale balsamroot)
• Calystegia collina ssp. tridactylosa (three-fingered morning-glory)
• Castilleja rubicundula var. rubicundula (pink creamsacs)
• Centromadia parryi ssp. congdonii (Congdon's tarplant)
• Ceanothus roderickii (Pine Hill ceanothus)
• Cuscuta jepsonii (Jepson’s dodder)
• Dithyrea maritima (beach spectaclepod)
• Extriplex joaquinana (San Joaquin spearscale)
• Fritillaria biflora var. ineziana (Hillsborough chocolate lily)
• Gilia capitata ssp. pacifica (Pacific gilia)
• Harmonia hallii (Hall's harmonia)
• Hesperolinon drymarioides (drymaria-like western flax)
• Lewisia cotyledon var. howellii (Howell’s lewisia)
• Monolopia gracilens (woodland woollythreads)
• Montia howellii (Howell's montia)
• Navarretia nigelliformis ssp. radians (shining navarretia)
• Sanicula saxatilis (rock sanicle)
• Sidalcea hickmanii ssp. parishii (Parish's checkerbloom)

Zoology

• Athene cunicularia (burrowing owl)
• Callophrys mossii marinensis (Marin elfin butterfly)
• Entosphenus lethophagus (Pit-Klamath brook lamprey)
• Entosphenus similis (Klamath River lamprey)
• Euphydryas editha quino (quino checkerspot butterfly)
• Rana boylii (foothill yellow-legged frog)
• Rana cascadae (Cascades frog)
• Spea hammondii (western spadefoot)
• Taxidea taxus (American badger)