From the rocky coasts of the Pacific Northwest’s mighty Pacific Ocean to the tops of the Canadian Rockies, through Florida Everglades’ River of Grass and across the painted deserts of the American Southwest then over the Appalachian Mountains … these galleries have a little bit of everything that the best of North American landscapes can offer.

North America is wildly rich in butterflies and moths. In the United States and Canada alone, there are roughly 750 species of butterflies and a whopping 11,000 species of moths! With careful and painstaking research, more new species are still being discovered all the time!

When it comes to birds, North America is fantastically rich in native species diversity. While some species are found all around the world, the vast majority are found only here and nowhere else.

We mammals have come a long way since the time of the dinosaurs. We’ve conquered the land, sea and air. North America has more than 740 species alive today.

Long before the first dinosaur walked the earth, reptiles ruled the world. 65 million years after the last dinosaur drew its final breath, North America’s modern crocodiles, alligators, snakes, lizards, and turtles and tortoises are still keeping our native natural history alive!

Did you know the word “amphibian” means “two lives”? All amphibians start their lives in the underwater, but after they go through a series of metamorphosis stages to adulthood, most trade gills for lungs and live the rest of their lives out of the water.

One of the largest families in the plant kingdom with nearly 28 thousand species around the globe, orchids are also one of the most popular and most sought-after flowering plants in history. In Victorian times, entire foreign expeditions were sent around the world at great personal risk led by fearless (and often ruthless) orchid hunters to acquire the next new unknown exotic species from the most distant corner of the Earth. Luckily for us, North America is rich with unique native species found nowhere else in the world!

Without the enormous and nearly invisible world of fungi, there would be no forests or plants as we know them, no animals living, feeding and hunting in the forests and nothing to break down what organic matter is left. It’s this wonderful (and often weird) group that keeps nutrients moving and cycling through our world’s ecosystems.