Native Plants & Wildflowers

Web Sites

• American Beauties: Native Plants
  National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has teamed up with Pride's Corner Farms and North Creek Nurseries, two wholesale nurseries, to create a collection of native perennials, grasses, vines, trees and shrubs which attract wildlife and look great in the garden, called American Beauties™. Currently the plants are selected for the Northeast.
• Celebrating Wildflowers Plant of the Week
  Each week the U.S. Forest Service's Celebrating Wildflowers features a different wildflower found on our national forests and grasslands.
• Center for Plant Conservation
  A Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden that is dedicated to conserving rare plants native to the United States.
• Connecticut Botanical Society: Gardening with Native Plants
  Includes color photos of recommended native plants for the garden
• eNature: Native Gardening and Invasive Plants Guide
  Check out these field guides online from the National Wildlife Federation! Includes trees & wildflowers and information on creating a backyard wildlife habitat.
• Grow Native!
  Grow Native! is a Missouri initiative that encourages use of landscape worthy native plants to create beautiful landscapes. It includes information on native plants, many of which will grow well in Pennsylvania.
• Kentucky State University PawPaw Information Website
  The KYSU Land Grant Program has the only full-time pawpaw research program in the world. The pawpaw is a fruit, related to the Cherimoya, that is indigenous to this country and was eaten by native Americans and early settlers. Pawpaw ( Asimina triloba ) is the only temperate climate member of the tropical family Annonaceae.
• Native American Ethnobotany Database
  Materials provided by Dan Moerman, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan. A searchable database including foods, drugs, dyes, fibers and other uses of plants (a total of over 47,000 items). This represents uses by 291 Native American groups of 3,895 species from 243 different plant families.
• Native Plant Database
  This database from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center offers a searchable directory of native plant species, seed suppliers, landscapers and native plant organizations for Texas and the nation. In the National Directory, if you go to "Recommended Native Plant Species", you can search a database with more than 1,000 native plant species. You can "View by State" with PA as the term and pull up 376 species with photos.
• North American Native Plant Society
  Includes a list of contact information for local state native plant societies.
• Plant Conservation Alliance
  The PCA is a consortium of ten federal government Member agencies and over 220 non-federal Cooperators representing various disciplines within the conservation field. On their website you can find lists of native plants that you can plant in your geographic region and a section on "Celebrating Wildflowers".
• Plant Native
  PlantNative is dedicated to moving native plants and naturescaping into mainstream landscaping practices. Located in Portland, Oregon but with information about native plants throughout the U.S.
• Prairie Moon Nursery
  Native Seeds and Plants for Prairie, Meadow, Wetland, Savanna, and Woodland. Located in Illinois they specialize in native plants of the upper midwest. Information includes each plant's geographic range.
• USDA Plants Database
  The PLANTS database contains native and naturalized vascular plants of the U.S. including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and native and naturalized mosses, lichens, and hepatics (liverworts and hornworts) of North America. PLANTS also has about 2200 vascular plants that do not grow naturally in the U.S. but are of general economic or botanic interest. PLANTS does not contain common garden plants or plants that occur only outside the U.S.
• Wildflowers
  Many of these can also be found in Pennsylvania
  • Connecticut Wildflowers - Connecticut Botanical Society
  • Delaware Wildflowers
  • Missouri Wildflower Guide
  • Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage - Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  • Kentucky Wildflowers
• Wild Ones: Landscaping with Native Plants
  2004 Edition of the Wild Ones Handbook available online in .pdf format

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Pittsburgh Region

• Audubon Center for Native Plants
  This is a site from the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania at Beechwood Farms (Dorseyville Road in the North Hills) whose mission it is to promote the use of native plants in landscaping. They have a Native Plant sale twice a year, in spring and in fall.
  • Local native plant species Allegheny County area
    A list of species native to Allegheny County and/or its contiguous counties compiled from the 1993 edition of The Vascular Flora of Pennsylvania, Annotated Checklist and Atlas, by Ann Fowler Rhoads and William McKinley Klein, Jr.
  • Culture and Use Guide For Western Pennsylvania Native Plants
• Flora Pittsburghensis
  "The city of Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs are full of wild flowers, and somebody needs to take their pictures. The main purpose of this collection is simply to enjoy the beauty of the natural world." This blog also contains lots of information about each plant, some are natives, some are "weeds".
• Food Under Foot
  This local blog's mission is to help people identify and learn to use the safe wild edible plants that grow all around us. Not all of them will be native plants but they are wild.
• My Wildflowrs
  Wildflowers from the trails of western Pennsylvania
  MyWildflowers has an extensive database of wildflower species, with great pictures of all of them, and offers great options for finding information. Their unique “Identify” feature, allows you to identify an unknown flower by selecting the information that you know – such as color, bloom shape, height, and month. This is a Western Pennsylvania site with information on the flowers along popular bicycle trails. Scroll down the page to the database information.
• Phipps Conservatory Native Plants Certificate Program
  Phipps offers a variety of classes leading to a certificate.
• Sylvania Natives
  Flowering Perennials, Shrubs and Small Trees Native to Western Pennsylvania
  "SYLVANIA NATIVES is Western Pennsylvania’s only privately owned nursery exclusively growing and selling quality, local genotype plants native to the region. We propagate and grow more than 80 species of plants from local seed we collect in the wild. All our plants are container grown outside with the seasons." Located off an alley in Squirrel Hill.

Pennsylvania

• Audubon At Home Guide to Gardening for Life in Southeastern Pennsylvania
  The Guide to Gardening for Life offers 84 colorful pages with informative essays and companion profiles of noteworthy residents who have successfully tackled problems and created habitat spaces that are toxic-free and wildlife-friendly. It is available online in .pdf format.
• Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry: Common Trees of Pennsylvania
  Includes 57 native trees.
• Pennsylvania Flora Project
  a major focus of the Botany Department of the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, the majority of the 400,000 specimens on which the entries are based reside in the herbaria of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, The Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, and the the Morris Arboretum. Unfortunately, no photos or illustrations are included.
• Pennsylvania Native Plant Society
  The Pennsylvania Native Plant Society (PNPS) is a not-for-profit organization that helps people learn about and enjoy native plants found in Pennsylvania. It sponsors numerous field trips throughout the state and publishes a quarterly newsletter for members.

Nearby States

• Cornell University: Beach Plum
  Beach plum (Prunus maritima) is a fruiting shrub native to coastal dunes of the Northeastern United States. Since colonial times, people have collected wild fruit to make preserves and jelly. Today, native stands still support a cottage beach plum product industry in the Northeast.
• Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping: Chesapeake Bay Watershed
  This is an online book from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Although Pittsburgh isn't exactly in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, there are many plants listed here that will do well.
• Native Plant Society of Northeastern Ohio
  Offers book list and online photos for identifying native plants.
• Native Plants of Ohio (Bulletin 865)
  Published by Ohio State University Extension, this bulletin discusses Ohio natural history, preservation of native plants, and profiles the native woody and herbaceous plants of Ohio.
• New York Flora Atlas
  The New York Flora Atlas is a source of information for the distribution of wild plants within the state, as well as information on plant habitats, associated ecological communities, and taxonomy.
• Ohio Prairie Association
  Unlike Southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio is mainly flat.
• Ohio State University Extension: Native Plant Bibliography
  The primary focus of the bibliography is on resources specific to Ohio and Ohio native plants.