Common manzanita

A large multi-stemmed native shrub-to-small-tree of western North America, named for the dusty powder-blue drupes that ripen in late summer over a waxy bloom. Flat-topped creamy-white flower cymes up to 10 inches across rise above pinnately compound serrated foliage in early summer, drawing birds and butterflies. The cooked fruit is edible and prized for jelly, pie, and wine, but the plant earns a "high maintenance" note for suckering, wind/snow breakage, and a roster of fungal and insect pests.

The hardiest and largest of the California lilacs - a fast-growing broadleaf-evergreen shrub of the Pacific coast that smothers itself in dense thyrse clusters of pale-to-deep blue flowers in spring. Glossy three-veined, finely toothed dark-green leaves and a billowing shrub habit make it a signature blue mass on West Coast slopes. Drought tolerant once established, it asks for little summer water and resents overwatering; deer and elk browse the foliage and the bloom is a documented draw for native bees.

The signature evergreen shrub of the California chaparral and coastal foothills - leathery, sharply toothed dark-green leaves, flat-topped clusters of small white summer flowers, and the brilliant red pomes that earned it the names Christmasberry and California holly (and, by way of the Hollywood hills, supposedly the name "Hollywood"). Long-lived and deeply drought-tolerant; the winter berries feed more than twenty bird species when little else is fruiting.

A western North American native large shrub or small multi-stemmed tree that erupts in clouds of magenta-pink pea-family flowers along bare branches in early spring - often before the leaves expand. The round, heart-shaped blue-green leaves with palmate venation follow, and flat 2-4 inch seed pods ripen burgundy-red and persist into winter. A drought-tolerant, butterfly- and bee-supporting native of dry slopes from northern California east to southern Utah and south to Arizona.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

The signature evergreen oak of the California coast and foothills - a broad-canopied tree with dense, dark, holly-like leaves whose spiny-toothed margins curl under, and a short, often massive trunk. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it growing 20 to 50 feet high and wide, with old specimens reaching 100 feet and living for centuries. A keystone wildlife tree: its acorns and dense canopy feed and shelter Oak Titmouse, scrub and Steller's jays, chestnut-backed chickadee, and roughly 30 other bird species, and it is a larval host for three duskywing and sister butterflies.