The Living Collection is central to our mission to inspire, inform and educate the public and the scientific community about California's native flora.

While we strive to grow the largest sample of California native plants possible, we focus on the long-lived perennial plant life of Southern California and Baja. Every year hundreds of plants become new additions to the Living Collection database. Detailed records are kept on where the plants were collected, how they were propagated, when they were planted out and how they are doing. The Living Collection database includes information on where plants can be found on the grounds (map).

We are a member of the North American Plant Collections Consortium (NAPCC) Multi-Institutional Oak Collection.  This collaborative venture composed of 17 botanic gardens from across North America is dedicated to preserving and displaying the oaks of the world. For our part, we are working to include specimens of every oak native to California in our collection.

Living collections of plants can serve several roles in an integrated, ex-situ (offsite) conservation plan. Living collections are well suited to short- or medium-term housing for plants destined for reintroduction, longer term retention of critically endangered plants and bulking up collections for reintroduction or long-term seed storage. The Living Collection at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden fills all three of these roles, frequently in collaboration with other botanic gardens, local government and non-governmental conservation agencies. The Living Collections are a valuable research and educational collection that promotes the study of our native plants and facilitates the communication of the importance of plant conservation

Navigate to our download horticulture forms page to download the field record form and an example of a completed form.

Arctostaphylos hookeri ssp. franciscana, Hooker’s manzanita, is not only critically endangered, it is extinct in the wild. Rancho Santa Ana holds four accessions of A. hookeri ssp. franciscana, ensuring that this plant is not lost and preserving this material for potential reintroduction. Cuttings of all accessions have been sent to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to be grown on and hand pollinated for the Millenium Seed Bank. Similar controlled pollinations will also contribute to our seed bank.

While not extinct in the wild, Cercocarpus traskiae, Catalina mountain-mahogany, is as close as a plant can come with only seven individuals remaining in a single valley on Catalina Island. Rancho Santa Ana holds vegetatively propagated representatives of all seven individuals, as well as an eighth cultivated plant determined to be genetically different from the wild plants by testing performed here at the garden. Maintaining the complete set of known individuals provides the greatest hope for allowing this species to continue on in the wild by keeping the maximum number of management options open.

It should be stressed that the most important conservation work must be preservation of plant populations in the wild (in-situ). Living collections can support in-situ conservation through ex-situ projects like those described here and elsewhere.