The Climate View is used by nurseries, gardeners, farmers, and horticulturists to identify the optimal growing conditions for a plant.

	Item	Notes
1	Sunshine	Optimal lighting requirements to prevent scorching and to promote healthy growth.
2	Water	Best moisture conditions for terrestrial plants.  A good indicator of a plant's tolerance to the extremes of drought and over saturation.
3	Optimal soil texture	The best type of soil for providing a support base and for retaining/releasing available water.
4	Acceptable soil pH	An indicator of a plant's suitability to acidic conditions.
5	USDA hardiness	The United States Department of Agriculture's hardiness zones in which this plant is known to thrive.  This range of zones indicates both the lowest temperature acceptable for survival as well as the plant's requirement for a cold dormant period.
6	AHS heat zones	The American Horticultural Society's heat zones in which this plant is known to survive.  The lower value indicates a plant's minimum requirement for summer heat. The upper value indicates a plant's maximum tolerance for summer heat.
7	Sunset climate zones	The Sunset Books' climate zones in which this plant does best.  This set of zones may be a discontinuous range, for example: "Zones 4-9, 14-24".
8	Plant community	One or more of the 29 plant communities defined by Munz, which indicates the native environment in which the species is naturally found growing.
9	Biotic community	One or more of the plant communities defined by Brown, Reichenbacher, and Franson which indicates the species' range of natural occurrence in the environment.