The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is a private, nonprofit research and education institution devoted to California flora. The plants on display are native species or cultivated forms developed from them. A few are ancient components of California flora or close relatives of our native species. Many rare and endangered species are grown here and the staff conducts research to conserve these important vanishing plants. Established in 1927 by Susanna Bixby Bryant in Orange County, the Garden moved to Claremont in 1951.

The Garden is a leading American research center in systematic and evolutionary botany. Programs focus on identification, classification, ecology, and evolution of plants. Our library, herbarium of preserved plants and laboratories all support research and education programs.

Many cultivated forms of native California plants for use in landscaping have been developed here through hybridization and selection. These plants are adapted to our climate and require less water than many introduced species.

The Garden offers a graduate program in botany with the Claremont Graduate School. Our community education program offers classes, lectures, tours, and special programs for schools and for people of all ages.

In nature, the distribution of plants rarely coincides with political boundaries, but rather is determined by the interaction of climate, geology and geography. A regional association of plants that share these growing conditions is called a

In North America, there are thirteen floristic provinces. Four occur in California: Californian, Vancouverian, Sonoran and Great Basin.

is defined by its Mediterranean climate. It is the smallest floristic province in North America, but has the greatest diversity of plants north of Mexico. It includes such characteristic vegetation as chaparral, coastal sage scrub, oak woodland and grassland. These plants exhibit classic adaptations to California's hot dry summers and cool wet winters.

encompasses the state's major forests and includes the mixed evergreen and coniferous forests of pines, mandrones and coast and sierran redwoods. In California, this province is transitional between Mediterranean-climate vegetation and the temperate coniferous rainforests of the Pacific Northwest.

is characterized by the giant cacti and desert scrub of the American Southwest and Mexico. At the edge of this province, California's desert vegetation is defined by joshua tree woodland, fan palm oasis and creosote bush scrub.

is dominated by the vastness of sagebrush scrub vegetation - the "sagebrush ocean." The majority of this high-elevation semidesert lies to the east of California in the rain shadow of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.

FOUNDED IN 1927 BY

IN MEMORY OF HER FATHER
JOHN W. BIXBY
IN ORDER TO FURTHER
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AND
ENJOYMENT OF THE TREES
AND SHRUBS AND FLOWERS
NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA

THIS BUILDING ERECTED IN 1951