SMMPlants


An interactive guide to plants of the Santa Monica Mountains


SMMPlants is an interactive guidebook to plants of the Santa Monica Mountains and nearby areas of Southern California.  If you've ever found yourself staring at an unknown plant and wishing you'd remembered to bring your guidebook, this is the guide for you--how often do you forget to bring your iPod or iPhone in the car?

 

Descriptions for each plant include leaf and flower features for identification, latin and common names for the plant, blooming period, and plant communities in which the plant is found.  One touch takes you to a glossary, full-sized photos for the plant, or the next or previous plant.  



SMMPlants features over 400 color photos for 310 plant species.  You can scroll through full-sized photos by swiping from left to right, and get detailed information on the plant currently being displayed. (Photo credit: Michael Charters.)

A Search menu lets you find plants based on several criteria:

  1. -Plant type (such as shrub or tree)

  2. -Plant community (such as Chaparral or Coastal sage scrub)

  3. -Blooming period--including what's blooming now.

  4. -Any text string appearing in the plant name or description.

To quickly identify a plant, you can browse thumbnails organized by photo type (flower, seed/fruit, or foliage), flower color, and family.  Buttons quickly allow you to jump to the group of photos you’re interested in. 


This thumbnail view is used in many parts of SMMPlants--whether to browse all photos, as you might with a guidebook at home, or when viewing search results, or only those plants in a particular family or genus.

Search results can be viewed as a list of plants, or in the thumbnail browser.  You can have a good idea of the plants you’ll see in bloom on a hike if you search for plants that are blooming now, and the plant community you’ll be hiking in.

Since amateurs and professionals alike can often make a good guess at the family of an unknown plant, you can also browse plant photos and descriptions by family.

For quickly looking up a species, genus, or family by name, there's an alphabetic index with common and scientific names for all species and families. 

SMMPlants includes built-in help and a glossary that is accessible from the main screen and from each plant description page.

Available on the iPhone App Store. SMMPlants was developed by Earthrover Software, with photos and text by Michael Charters and Chris Leger.  If you’re an author or photographer and would like to see your guide on the iPhone or iPod touch, contact us at c31337@gmail.com.


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