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Cultivating Place: California Native Plant Week: CNPS Rare Plant Program & Inventory with Aaron Sims

Calochortus tolmiei, hairy star tulip. "Not rare. Actually, the most common star tulip in Trinity County and is truly a star." Photos courtesy of Aaron Sims, All Rights Reserved.
Calochortus tolmiei, hairy star tulip. "Not rare. Actually, the most common star tulip in Trinity County and is truly a star." Photos courtesy of Aaron Sims, All Rights Reserved.

The third week of April is California Native Plant week, this year being celebrated by the California Native Plant Society via 8 days of action in honor and protection of our native plant diversity. 

Our celebratory action item here at Cultivating Place is being in conversation this week with Aaron Sims, Director of the Rare Plant Program for CNPS. 2024 year marks the 50th anniversary of the CNPS Rare Plant Inventory, tracking and analyzing rare plants and their status across the floristic province to help fight extinction (and subsequent biodiversity loss), to engage citizen scientists, including gardeners, across the state, and to inform land use decisions statewide. 

Along with the beauty, joy, and life sustaining qualities of our native plant flora whereever we might live and garden, that is all worth celebrating.

Darlingtonia californica California pitcherplant, CRPR 4.2 (watchlist). "Many people know about this large, charismatic parasitic plant! It grows in serpentine seeps throughout my neck of the woods. " Photos courtesy of Aaron Sims, All Rights Reserved.
Darlingtonia californicaCalifornia pitcherplant, CRPR 4.2 (watchlist). "Many people know about this large, charismatic parasitic plant! It grows in serpentine seeps throughout my neck of the woods. " Photos courtesy of Aaron Sims, All Rights Reserved.

Happy Native Plant (rare and common) Gardening to you - listen in!

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We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations.

The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

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Jennifer Jewell is the creator and host of the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of garden and floral designing mother and a wildlife biologist father.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.