I grew up in southern California, and I love hiking and botanizing its local coastline, foothills, deserts, and mountains. Since a very young age, I have always been fascinated by plants, plant morphology, and growing plants. As a kid, I could be found dissecting flowers and germinating seeds. I was obsessed with growing cacti, sunflowers, and apple trees. By high school, I knew I wanted to study botany. It was also during high school that I first learned about California native plants, and since then, my fascination with California’s native flora has grown.

I hold an M.S. in Environmental Science with an emphasis in botany from CSUDH. My master’s research focused on bryophytes (non-vascular land plants) and biological soil crust of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Since then, I have worked as a consulting botanist, a naturalist for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (PVPLC), as an independent field botany researcher, a plant systematics lecturer at CSULB, and presently the field botanist/seed farm manager for the PVPLC. I have recently described two new species of plants (Erigeron palosverdensis & Verbena gemmea). I have finished writing an efield guide to the native vascular plants of the Palos Verdes Peninsula (which is free to access and found on this website). I am also wrapping up a bryophyte flora of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. In my free time, I can be found growing native plants (if you want to know it, you have to grow it!) and hiking the Palos Verdes Peninsula studying its flora. See you in the field.

Cheers!