Activity: Meet California Native Plants
Ceanothus is popular with pollinators like bumblebees. Photo by Max Tepper. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Introduction
California is home to more than 6,000 native plants that have evolved in this environment. They help make the land resilient to drought and fire and provide food and habitat for people and animals.
This set of California Native Plant Cards, developed in collaboration with Samantha Morales Johnson Yang, a Tongva ethnobotanist, features seven native plants found in Southern California, including coast live oak and white sage. The cards feature plants that are ambassadors of Tongva culture and combine Western botanical knowledge with Indigenous science—also known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Instead of learning about plants through identification and memorization, the cards’ prompts encourage students to look closely, engage their senses, and build connections. Each card is written in the first person to encourage students to see plants as living beings and help build relationships with them.
About Indigenous Science
When students think of science, they may envision sterile laboratories filled with lab-coat-wearing scientists who have years of specialized university training. This image can overlook other important ways science is learned and shared.
Indigenous science is the scientific knowledge passed down from tribal elders to their communities and has been credited with supporting the world’s most important ecosystems, like the Amazon. It is also a way of life that centers on community, empathy, and collaboration, and includes everyone, from infants to elders. In Indigenous Science, humans are learners, plants and animals are teachers, and data is passed down through oral history, some of which is respectfully shared through these cards.
The best way to learn from plants is to treat them with kindness, respect, and empathy. Plants can hear, feel touch, and possess intelligence. Underestimating their intelligence can even be harmful—for example, some plants have adaptations like spines that help protect them.
These cards teach students that by observing closely and treating living things with kindness, they can have fun while building meaningful connections with plants.
How to Use this Resource
The California Native Plant Cards are available in both a printable and digital version. Find both versions below. Use them during your Self-Guided Visit to The Huntington or in any outdoor learning space with native plants.
Printable Version
Printing and Assembling Your Cards
- Print the cards double-sided in portrait orientation using the Long Edge Binding so the cards flip like a book (open to the left/top).
- Cut out the cards.
- Create the deck by arranging the cards in the following order:
- Using Your Cards
- About These Cards
- Plant Cards. Arrange these in any order you like, with the picture side first
- Tool, writing, and drawing cards
Use the Tool Cards to look closely and explore plant colors. Photo by Kristin Brisbois McNutt. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
- Staple the cards together to make a flipbook, or hole-punch them and connect them with a string or binder ring.
To assemble, staple the cards together to make a flipbook, or hole-punch them and connect them with a string or binder ring. Photo by Kristin Brisbois McNutt. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Use the interactive map and plant cards to find California native plants during your Self-Guided Visit to The Huntington. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Standards
- LS2.A. Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
- LS4.C. Adaptation
- Principle I: People Depend on Natural Systems - Concept A. The goods produced by natural systems are essential to human life and to the functioning of our economies and cultures.
- Grade 4 – Standard 4.2.1
- C3 (College, Career, and Civic Life) Framework - D2.Geo.8.K–2. Compare how people in different types of communities use local and distant environments to meet their daily needs.
- Connecting - Anchor Standard 10. Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own ideas clearly and persuasively.
Contributors and Reviewers
Kristin Brisbois McNutt, Ph.D., is the educator programs specialist at The Huntington.
Sarah Thomas is the senior manager of school programs and partnerships at The Huntington.
Gwenyth Greco is a GIS mapping technician at The Huntington.
Lori Ann Achzet is creative director at The Huntington.
Michael Pazmino is GIS project manager at The Huntington.
Rebekka Takamizu is associate director of special projects, graphic design at The Huntington.
Samantha Morales Johnson Yang is a Tongva ethnobotanist.
Dora Dalton is a freelance writer and editor.
Sandy Masuo is botanical content specialist at The Huntington.
Thomas Smith is botanical education manager at The Huntington.
Victoria Gonzalez is the digital learning specialist at The Huntington.
Special thanks to the 2025–26 Teacher Advisory Panel: Amelia Angulo, Marivell Caba Arayasirikul, E. Dominic Black, Rubina Chadha, Merek Chang, Dolores Delgado, Shannon Garrison, Meghann Kraft, Rachel Kulik, Dahlia Martin, Rachel Morrison, Michael Ochs, Dr. Izzy Pittman, Laura Ruiz, and Giuliana Silva.
