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Wildflower Identification Website
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Outstanding Contributors

Steve and Yan

I'm Steve Sullivan and I made this Website. I collected the data, organized it and wrote the programs.

I obtained a BS degree in Math from Oregon State University before there was a computer science degree. Then I worked for Tektronix for 35 years as a programmer, circuit board designer and an integrated circuit designer. Now that I have retired, making a wildflower identification website and Apps has become my hobby. I also enjoy taking wildflower hikes with my wife, Yan, who enjoys photographing flowers with macro photography.

We formed Wildflower Search, an Oregon Not-for-profit Corporation that owns and maintains the WildflowerSearch.org website and the Free Wildflower Identification apps.


Patrick Alexander

Patrick Alexander obtained his PhD in botany at New Mexico State University. During his summers he toured the country examining plants and making a most remarkable Polyploid Website of botanical photos. Patrick now works as a botanist at the Las Cruces New Mexico office of the Bureau of Land Management.

Patrick has posted his photos on Flickr and on his website and licenses them thru the Creative Commons allowing them to be used in this website.


Zoya Akulova

Zoya Akulova is a Russian botanist now living in California. She works as a botanist in an environmental consulting company. She has an amazing collection of over 33,000 botanical photos on the CalPhotos website including photos from all over the world.

Thank you, Zoya, for using a Creative Commons license, allowing us to use your botanical photos in this website.


Wynn Anderson

Wynn Anderson retired after 45 years at the University of Texas at El Paso, most recently as Director and Botanical Curator of the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens of the Centennial Museum. Currently, Wynn is editing and disbursing a 25 year collection of over 50,000 plant photographs. He now has over 12,000 plant photos on the CalPhoto website, mostly from the desert regions and the sky islands of the southwestern US and northern Mexico, and especially the highland plateau of the Sierra Madre Occidental in western Chihuahua.

We are grateful that Wynn posts his photos with a Creative Commons license, allowing us to use them in this website.


Ryan Batten

Ryan Batten is one of those people who takes amazing plant photos, often of rare plants, but does not want to bring attention to himself. He has 400 photos on CalPhotos, 3,500 photos on Flickr (under Tab Tannery) and more on other websites.

Because Ryan often captures rare or difficult to find plants it is especially nice to have his permission to use his photos on this website.


Barry Breckling

Barry Breckling was a California State Park ranger for 38 years, including 30 years at Henry W. Coe State Park. Now based in the Sierra Nevada foothills, he and his wife, Judy, work on botany projects around Yosemite National Park. One of their projects is the Yosemite Wildflowers App for Android and Apple devices.

Barry takes excellent botanical photos and has contributed more than 7,000 botanical photos to the CalPhotos website. He licenses them with a Creative Commons license allowing them to be used in this website.


Sue Carnahan

Sue Carnahan is a botanist, birder, amateur naturalist and writer. She has been photographing wildlife in the Arizona area, making excursions into adjoining areas including Mexico. The great number of photos (over 13,000 on Flickr), the quality of the photos and the range makes her photo collection quite valuable.

Sue has allowed us to use her photos. We are grateful for that.


Debra Cook

Debra L. Cook is a serious nature and plant life photographer. She has a passion for the outdoors, for mountain hiking and for discovering new wildflowers to photograph and identify.

Debra has contributed over 3,900 photos to the CalPhotos website. We thank her for allowing us to use her excellent photos in the Wildflower Search website and in the free wildflower identification apps that we produce.


Chris Christie

Christopher L. Christie is a former microbiologist, medical laboratory technologist, native plant nurseryman and grazing activist. He studied grazing damage to ecosystems throughout the American West for over three decades.

Chris is building a collection of plant, animal and rock art photographs on CalPhotos and at his Flickr site. He has been helping us by allowing his plant photos to be used on this website.


Alan Cressler

Alan Cressler is a nature photographer living in Atlanta, Georgia. His favorite subjects include: fungi, insects, reptiles and amphibians, caves, mountains, volcanoes, rivers, waterfalls, prehistoric artwork, and oceans. Along the way he takes great photographs of interesting plants.

We are fortunate that Alan gives his permission so that we can use his photographs on this website. Photo of Alan at Hartselle Cave.


Shirley Denton

Shirley Denton is an expert in Florida plant and wildlife ecology. She has earned a PhD in forest ecology and is active in the Florida Native Plant Society.

Shirley has combined her botanical skill with her ability to take great botanical photos to make a remarkable website of Nature Photography that contains over 12,000 plant photographs including over 2,000 species from Florida. Shirley allows limited use of her photos in some non-profit applications and has generously allowed her photos to be used in this website.


Eleanor Dietrich

Eleanor Dietrich has posted one of the best collections of native wildflowers photographs for the north Florida panhandle on Flickr. The roughly 8,000 photos are under a Creative Commons license allowing them to be used in this website.

Eleanor has also been active in the Florida Wildflower Foundation. Having been inspired by Doug Tallamy's books on native landscaping she has been helping restore areas by removing invasive plants and encouraging native plants.


Layla Dishman

Layla Dishman is a Biology student in Knoxville and aspires to a PhD in Botany. She became interested in Enthnobotany around 1998 and developed a love for the local flora when she moved to the Smoky Mountains. Since that time she has posted around 10,000 botanical images on Flickr of about 2,000 species.

Layla's photos are a significant contribution to this website. She is able to capture the essence of a plant making the image both informative and artistic. (Photo of Nigel in the library room.)


Mark Egger

Mark Egger has studied the genus Castilleja for over 30 years and has traveled extensively throughout North America, Mexico, and Central and South America in his research. He has published numerous papers in botanical journals, including the description of 9 Castilleja species new to science. He has authored the treatment of Castilleja for the Flora of North America and for the Plants of the Four Corners Region.

Mark maintains a Paintbrush Website that includes sets of photos for every species and variety of Castilleja occurring in North America north of Mexico and of most of the species found elsewhere. We are grateful to be able to use Mark's photos on this website.


John Gwaltney

John Gwaltney earned a Master's Degree in Wildlife Biology and spent most of his working career in the forestry supply business. As a hobby John has built the best botanical website in the Southeastern portion of the United States: Southeastern Flora.

John's website contains over 50,000 pictures of over 2,200 species of plants. We are grateful to be able to use John's botanical photos in this app.


Sonnia Hill

Sonnia Hill is a field botanist in Texas. She has published papers in technical journals and helps train people in botany.

Over the last 15 years Sonnia has been photographing and identifying plants in Texas and she has posted over 12,000 of her botanical photos on Flickr. We are thankful that Sonnia allows her photos to be used on this website.


John Hilty

John Hilty became interested in wildflowers during the 1990s, when he created a small garden with native wildflowers and began photographing them using a digital camera. As his knowledge and skills improved, he created the Illinois Wildflowers website in 2002 and has been expanding it ever since.

John is a content partner of the Encyclopedia of Life, where both the text and photographs of his website have been published, and he is a member of local environmental groups, including Grand Prairie Friends, Champaign County Audubon Society, and Natural Areas Study Group.

In addition to allowing his botanical photographs to be used in this website John has contributed more than a thousand excellent plant descriptions to the free Wildflower Identification apps that we have produced.


Jason Hollinger

Jason Hollinger was trained in physics and math and for nearly seven years was a programmer in the finance industry. Jason "retired" early to wander the earth learning about everything. Which resulted in many excellent botanical photos on Flickr and the development (with others) of two amazing websites. The Mushroom Observer allows people to post photos of mushroom and lichen and to obtain help identifying them. The Ways of Enlichenment contains photos of over 2,000 species of lichen.

Thank you, Jason, for making your botanical photographs available to everyone and for promoting botanical education.


Eric Hunt

Eric Hunt is a Botanical Photographer based in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has extensively photographed native plants in California and Arkansas. He is a board member of the Arkansas Native Plant Society and leads wildflower hikes throughout the Natural State.

Many of Eric's photos could win photo contest awards. Eric allows his photos to be used on this website. Thank you, Eric.


Mary Keim

Mary Keim retired after 35 years of teaching biology at Seminole State College in Florida. She has been posting her wildlife photos on Flickr for ten years where she has 8,000 remarkable photos from the Florida area. Mary is also putting her observations on iNaturalist.

Mary licenses her photos for non-commercial uses through the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) allowing us to use them. Thank you, Mary. (Photo by R. Snyder.)


Russ Kleinman

Russ Kleinman retired from a medical career in order to spend time exploring nature and exercising his botanical skills. Russ has been working with the Western New Mexico University Department of Natural Sciences where he is an Associate Botanist. One of his projects has been the creation of a website for the Vascular Plants of the Gila Wilderness.

Russ has documented about 1,500 species on this website with high resolution botanical photos. He allows these images to be used by others for educational purposes. Thank you, Russ.


Neal Kramer

Neal Kramer is a consulting botanist with a BA in botany from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS in Forest Ecology from the University of Idaho. Neal has posted over 25,000 botanical photos to the CalPhotos website.

Thank you, Neal, for allowing your photos to be used on this website.


Louis-M. Landry

Louis-M. Landry has a B.Sc. (Biology) from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His passion for photography and interest as a professional biologist has resulted in over 7,500 images of wildlife on the CalPhotos website.

Many of Louis-M.'s botanical photos are of plants in the Quebec area. He allows his photos to be used on this website and for that we are grateful.


Matt Lavin

Matt Lavin is a professor of Plant Sciences & Plant Pathology at Montana State University. He studies native and exotic plant diversity and teaches courses. "The emphasis of my research is on the molecular systematics and biogeography of the biodiverse legume plant family (Fabaceae or Leguminosae), including the cultivated species. Because legumes are often most diverse in highly seasonal environments, I am interested in the study of patterns of plant biodiversity across large landscapes of the North American sagebrush steppe and adjacent desert regions, and Neotropical seasonally dry tropical forests (those rich in succulent taxa such as Cactaceae and Euphorbiaceae) and adjacent tropical savannas and wet forests."

Matt has posted about 19,000 botanical photos to Flickr for use in teaching and to help him remember taxonomic-ecological-geographical points-in-time. Thank you, Matt, for allowing others to use your photos.


Max Licher

Max Licher, by training an architect, has used his lifelong interest in nature to become a leader in Arizona plant identification. Max is one of the coordinating botanists for the Plant Atlas of Arizona Project (PAPAZ) which trains amateur botanists in collecting techniques. In addition, Max has become an expert on Southwestern Sedges and Rushes, and is contributing to treatments on these families for updates to both the Arizona & New Mexico floras. He is also an avid botanical photographer.

Max has contributed over 5,800 botanical photographs to the Southwest Environmental Information Network (SEINet). He also allows his photos to be used on this website.


Uli Lorimer

Uli Lorimer is the curator of the Native Flora Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He has had a passion for wildflowers and anything green since he was a boy. Photography came later on in his career as a way to document what was going on in the garden as well as in his field work. It also serves as a great resource for teaching and lecturing as each image accompanies a time, place, and story.

Uli has posted 22,000 photos to Flickr. He uses a Creative Commons license allowing us to use his photos in this website.


Steve Matson

Steve Matson became interested in botany 30 years ago and developed a passion to seek out the lesser known taxa of plants. For fifteen years he has been photographing plants with botanical precision and over 25 thousand of these excellent images are now on the CalPhotos website. You can find Steve leading field trips of the California Native Plant Society.

Steve has consistently supported the development of this website by allowing us to use his photos.


Susan McDougall

Susan McDougall was born in Seattle and is by training a mathematician and programmer. Her passion for Mount Rainier took root when she returned to the Northwest in the 1970s. She has summited the Mountain and hiked most of its trails, and published a book entitled The Trees of Mount Rainier.

Susan's love of trees led to a book, Trees Live Here: the Arboretums of America. With her husband, she researched and wrote the definitive book on the flora of Mount Adams, Washington's second tallest volcano, as well as a Mount Adams wildflower book.

Susan has photographed most of the plant species native to Mount Rainier. You can see these photos in the app, Mt. Rainier Wildflowers, and on Susan's website, Rainier in Bloom. Susan generously allows her botanical photos to be used in this website.


Minnesota Wildflowers

The Minnesota Wildflowers website created by Katy Chayka, Minnesota Master Naturalist volunteer and native plant enthusiast, with collaboration by Peter M. Dziuk, noted imaginographer and long-time native plant advocate is one of the best wildflower websites. With the MN Flora Group LLC they have produced a Minnesota Wildflower app.

Katy and Peter allow us to use their photographs. Thank you. In addition, we get to link to their most excellent plant website.


Gary A. Monroe

Gary A. Monroe is a retired soil scientist who worked for the Soil Conservation Service for 33 years. He is a member of the Nevada Native Plant Society and the Jepson Society. His major hobby now is the photography and growing of wildflowers and leading hikes with the Nevada Native Plant Society.

Gary has contributed over 5,500 botanical images to the CalPhotos program where he licenses them so that they can be used in non-profit applications.


Keir Morse

Keir Morse is a professional field botanist with a BS in Biology from Northland College and a MS in Biology from Southern Oregon University. Currently Keir is a PhD student at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden studying the taxonomy of the genus Malacothamnus. Keir has worked in natural areas across the United States and in New Zealand sometimes engaging in environmental consulting and doing rare plant surveys.

Since the year 2000, he has posted more than 38,000 botanical photos to CalPhotos to help himself and others with plant identification. Because of the quality of Keir's photos, the vast number of species that he has photographed and the large number of species in the areas where he has photographed, Keir has contributed more photos to this website than any other person.


Jerry Oldenettel

When Jerry Oldenettel retired he became seriously involved in photographing birds and butterflies. Not only has he traveled the USA but he has branched out to Central America, Europe, Africa and more. Along the way he has posted about 41,000 photos on Flickr.com.

Mixed in with his photos of birds and butterflies are many great botanical photos. Jerry licenses his photos with Creative Commons allowing them to be used in non-commercial applications such as this website.


Jean Pawek

A California native, Jean Pawek earned a BA in Botany at Berkeley in 1949. She taught school in both Oakland and Central Africa. While in Africa she collected for various herbariums (14,363 collections in 12 years). Back in California she started a second profession as a seed analyst and then became a library assistant.

In retirement she has been photographing plants with over 17,000 photos contributed to the CalPhotos website. Many of these photos are special, showing seeds or interesting aspects of the plant. Jean only asks that she be given credit for using her photos making them available for many uses.


James L. Reveal

James L. Reveal was a U.S. botanist best known for his contributions to the genus Eriogonum and for his work on suprageneric names. At the time of his death in 2015, Reveal was a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, adjunct professor at Cornell University's Department of Plant Biology and honorary curator at the New York Botanical Garden.

Dr. Reveal kindly allowed us to use his photos from his PlantSystematics.org website. He also made some corrections and suggestions to this website.


Adam Schneider

Adam Schneider does freelance graphic design, layout, writing, editing, research, Web design and similar things. He lives in Portland, Oregon, but often you can find him hiking in the Pacific Northwest where he takes pictures of almost everything, including botanical photos, some of which are in this website. You can find his photos at adamschneider.net/photos.

Adam is an editor of the data on the Wildflower Search website. He also contributes ideas and graphic design.


Al Schneider

Al Schneider is the author of the app, Colorado Rocky Mountain Wildflowers, and the web site, SWColoradoWildflowers.com. Al retired in 1998 after careers as an English Professor, Ozark Trail Developer for Missouri State Parks, backcountry guide, and computer-based teacher with the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe. Al, his wife Betty, and their pup Willi, are often out hiking the wildflower trails of the Four Corners region.

Al's website contains over 5,000 botanical photos. We are fortunate that Al is helping with this website by allowing us to share his photos. Al is also a source of encouragement.


Stan Shebs

Stan Shebs is a software engineer who has worked at Google and other places. In his spare time he edits for Wikipedia, posts photos on Wikimedia Commons and runs a stamp collecting website with records of over 580,000 types of postage stamps.

Stan has posted his extensive collection of botanical photos on Wikimedia Commons helping to provide photos for this website.


Dale Shields

Dale Shields is a retired chemical engineer. For many years Dale has volunteered at ecological restoration efforts at forest preserves in Lake and Cook Counties in Illinois. Recently, he has volunteered at the Lake County, IL Forest Preserve District native plant nursery, where he has been using his photography hobby to help improve plant identification skills. Field guides typically focus on flowers and seldom show what plants look like when their seeds are ripe, knowledge that would be very helpful to the county volunteer seed collectors. With Kelly Schultz, the county volunteer coordinator, he assembled a set of photographic "Seed Collection Guides" which are posted at the Chicago Field Museum website at https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org.

Thank you, Dale, for allowing your many seed photographs to be used in this website.


Walter Siegmund

Walter Siegmund obtained degrees in physics (BS) and astronomy (MS) but his professional experience was mainly in mechanical, optical and electrical engineering. In 2005 he started editing Wikipedia and has made more than 10,000 edits. He also became a wildlife photographer contributing more than 6,600 images to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.

Walt not only allows his botanical photographs to be used in this website, he is a member of the board of Wildflower Search, the non-profit company that owns this website. Walt has contributed to this website in many ways.


Paul Slichter

Since retiring in 2008 Paul Slichter has taken on a second career as a field botanist. He has been exploring new places, photographing plants, surveying, keying and making perhaps the best botanical website for the Pacific Northwest, the Flora and Fauna Northwest. In 2013 Paul was made a Native Plant Society of Oregon Fellow for his contributions to the NPSO and the botanical community.

Paul has made his extensive collection of botanical photos available for this website and for this we are very grateful.


Richard Spellenberg

Richard Spellenberg is Professor Emeritus of Biology at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He obtained a doctoral degree in botany from the University of Washington in 1968, after which he moved to N.M.S.U. where he has taught since.

Richard has authored or edited a number of books on botany including Sonoran Desert Wildflowers, Trees of Western North America and The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Western Region.

Richard has posted over 5,000 botanical images on CalPhotos and we are thankful to be able to use many of them in this website.


Forest and Kim Starr

Since 1997, Forest & Kim Starr have provided botanical, entomological, and faunal surveys in support of planning, permitting, research and management efforts in the state of Hawaii. As they work they also post photos on Flickr and now have a phenomenal collection of 174,000 images.

Forest & Kim's Flickr photos are licensed with a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to use them with attribution. Although their photos are taken in Hawaii many of the species have been introduced and can also be found in the more tropical areas of the United States. We appreciate both using their photos in this website and the ability to make links to their photo site.


Tony Valois

Tony Valois, while working at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, documented virtually every plant species in the Recreation Area and developed the award winning Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area website. This information is also available as an iPhone app.

Tony has documented over 1,200 species with over 7,000 botanical images. Many of Tony's photos are used on this website.


Virginia Tech Forest Resources vTree Factsheets

A team at the Virginia Tech Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation has put together vTree, the best tree identification website in North America. The team went on to make excellent tree identification apps for Android and Apple devices.

The team leader is John Seiler, Distinguished Professor of Forestry. Happily, their photo use policy allows their photos to be used in nonprofit uses such as this website.


Thousand Photographers

More than a Thousand Image Authors have contributed to this website, so many that they can't all be listed here. But every one of them is appreciated. Most often they have posted their photos with a Creative Commons license. Some have made their photos public domain. Others have given us their permission to use their photos.

You can see their names and the number of photos that have been contributed on the Image Authors page. Thank you for taking great botanical photos, for identifying the species, for posting your photos on the web and for giving us permission to use them.


Botanical Collectors

Thousands and thousands of Botanical Plant Collectors, over the last hundred years, have collected millions of plant specimens that are now archived in herbaria. Each collection is verified, then pressed and dried and cataloged. Other people have converted these collections into digital records which we use to deduce where and when species can be found. We use over ten million of these collection records.

The search by location, elevation and time of year used in this website is only possible because of the great amount of work done by the botanical plant collectors and the herbarium staff. The many herbaria involved in this work can be seen at this Attribution and Copyright link. Thank you, collectors and herbarium staff, for the work that you do.