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iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Ericaceae family

Bonny Doon Manzanita Arctostaphylos silvicola

Native Specialist-bee host
Early-season nectar — Flowers in a late-winter / early-spring window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable early forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Bonny Doon Manzanita is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states. It blooms Jan – Dec. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Arctostaphylos silvicola is a species of manzanita known by the common names Bonny Doon or silverleaf manzanita. It is endemic to the sandhills of the southern Santa Cruz Mountains in California's Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Lifespan
Perennial
Flower colour
White AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jan – Dec — 47 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~17 caterpillar species

Arctostaphylos supports ~17 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Arctostaphylos in North America, including:

Acronicta perdita · owlet moth Aethaloida packardaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Amorbia cuneanum · leafroller moth Amphipyra pyramidoides · Copper Underwing Anacamptodes clivinaria · Mountain Mahogany Looper Anarta cordigera · owlet moth
+ 8 more species →
Ancylis comptana · leafroller moth Antaeotricha manzanitae · concealer moth Apharetra californiae · owlet moth Argyrotaenia franciscana · Orange Tortrix Aseptis ethnica · owlet moth Aseptis fumeola · owlet moth Aseptis perfumosa · owlet moth Automeris cecrops · Cecrops Eyed Silkmoth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 12 bee visitors

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Arctostaphylos is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

12 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Bonny Doon Manzanita :

Andrena principalis · mining bee · ✦ specialist Bombus melanopygus · Black Tail Bumble Bee Habropoda depressa · digger bee Apis mellifera · Honey Bee Bombus vosnesenskii · Vosnesensky Bumble Bee Habropoda cineraria · digger bee
+ 6 more bees →
Andrena arctostaphylae · mining bee Diadasia bituberculata · chimney bee · ✦ specialist Habropoda tristissima · digger bee Hesperapis pellucida · ✦ specialist Lasioglossum pacificum · sweat bee Protosmia rubifloris
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (18) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[11] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[14] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[15] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[16] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[17] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[18] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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