This lifeform is found in the Pacific States and Provinces of North America. The white color will help identify this lifeform.

California Strawberry (Fragaria californica) is found widely in California as far south as Baja California and as far north as Del Norte County.  The slender petioles that are less than 13 cm long help identify this species. The three leaflets are usually about the same shape. Kartesz now places F. californica as a subspecies of F. vesca. F. vesca in its western North American subspecies is found as far north as British Columbia.

Kartesz finds only four valid species in the genus Fragaria. However, Hitchcock and Cronquist, who authored the "Botany of the Pacific Northwest," find that crinita is a subspecies of F. vesca. At any rate, this is an assemblage of very similar species.

Fragaria chiloensis        Coastal California
Fragaria crinita           N. California and Pacific Northwest
Fragaria vesca             Widespread in USA
Fragaria virginiana        Widespread in USA

Fragaria genus is native to the north temperate zones of both the Old and New World.  There is also a species native to Chile.  There are about a dozen species of perennial herbs in this genus.  The 3-foliate leaves are alternate.  The 5-petaled flowers are white, and the fruit is red when ripe. There were four species and 14 named subspecies growing in greater North America as of 1994.

Rose Family has been arbitrarily divided into several different parts to facilitate study. This portion contains the small wild plants in the family. Included herein are wild roses, strawberries, raspberries, and other related plants. (The rose hybrids, Spiraea, and fruit trees are the other sections created to study this large family.)

Rose Family (Rosaceae) of the Rose Order contains the Rose genus and is a very large diverse family containing not only the roses, but many small weeds and also the important fruit trees including the apple, cherry, pear, and plum. Along with the Grass and Legume Families, this family is one of the most important of all plant groups. There are over 3,000 species in this family organized into over 100 different genera. There are over 840 species growing in greater North America. Typical flowers in this family have five petals and five sepals.

Here the family is divided as follows:

A) Miscellaneous small wild plants such as roses, strawberries, et cetera
B) Rose hybrids of interest to the flower gardener
C) Spiraea group (which forms a natural subfamily)
D) Fruit trees and hawthorns, et cetera

Rose Group (Order Rosales) contains many large and very important families. Included here are fruit trees in the family Rosaceae, the nitrogen fixing plants like clover and alfalfa (in the family  Leguminosae), and a large assemblage of plants divided into over fifteen different families.

Dicots (Dicotyledoneae Class) are the predominant group of vascular plants on earth. With the exception of the grasses (Monocots) and the Conifers (Gymnosperms), most of the larger plants that one encounters are  Dicots. Dicots are characterized by having a seed with two outer shell coverings. Some of the more primitive Dicots are the typical hardwood trees (oaks, birches, hickories, etc). The more advanced Dicots include many of the Composite Family flowers like the  Dandelion, Aster, Thistles, and Sunflowers. Although many Monocots reach a very high degree of specialization, most botanists feel that the Dicots represent the most advanced group of plants.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.