Privacy
This site collects as little as it can get away with.
Last updated July 10, 2026.
About this policy
This site is used by visitors in both Canada and the United States. This policy explains what Wildflower Archive collects when you visit the site, why, and how to exercise your rights under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Quebec's Law 25, California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), and similar US state privacy laws.
Privacy officer
Questions or requests about this policy can be directed to the Privacy Officer at contact@wildflowerarchive.com.
Information we collect
No accounts, no logins, and no personal data entered anywhere on the site by default.
Automatic collection: aggregate, pseudonymous traffic analytics (page views, referrers, rough location, device type) to understand what's useful. This may include Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies or persistent identifiers, and Google Analytics, which does.
Voluntary submission: if you email contact@wildflowerarchive.com, that correspondence is kept to respond to you. If you use the hardiness zone tool, the ZIP or postal code you enter is sent to third-party services to resolve a zone (see Service providers below); for Canadian postal codes, only the first three characters are used, identifying a region rather than an address. The result is stored in your own browser, not on our servers.
Wildflower Archive does not collect payment information, government identifiers, or health information.
How we use your information
Data collected is used only to operate the site, respond to inquiries, understand aggregate usage, and meet legal obligations. Wildflower Archive does not build advertising profiles from site data.
Plant and botanical data sources
Plant facts, taxonomy, and hardiness data on this site come from the USDA PLANTS Database, the GBIF Taxonomy, and Natural Resources Canada's plant hardiness model. This is public reference data about plants, not personal information about you as a visitor.
Cookies, tracking, and your choices
A cookie banner appears on your first visit, offering Necessary (always on, used only to remember your cookie choice), Analytics, and Advertising categories. Your choice is stored in a first-party cookie named cookie-consent for up to 365 days, and you can change it at any time using "Manage cookies" in the footer.
Cloudflare Web Analytics, when enabled, does not use cookies. Google Analytics, when enabled, uses cookies to distinguish sessions; outside Quebec it runs by default under an opt-out model, and you can switch it off at any time using "Manage cookies" in the footer. In Quebec, analytics stays off until you opt in, per Law 25. Wildflower Archive honors the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal as a binding opt-out and automatically turns off analytics (and any future advertising) for anyone whose browser sends it.
Advertising
Advertising is not in use on this site yet. If it is added, this site will use Google AdSense. Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. You will be able to opt out of personalized advertising in your Google Ads Settings, and learn more about how Google uses data at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. Non-personalized ads will be shown to anyone who declines the Advertising category or sends a GPC signal. This section will be updated before any ads go live.
Service providers and international data transfers
Wildflower Archive is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes all site traffic and may store data outside Canada. Where enabled, Google Analytics processes traffic data and may store it in the United States. The hardiness zone tool sends ZIP or postal code lookups to Zippopotam.us, the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map API (PHZMAPI), and Natural Resources Canada's official mapping service to resolve a zone. When a page loads, the site also makes a first-party request to our host, Cloudflare, to estimate whether you are in the US or Canada (country only) so the zone tool can pick a sensible default; no address or postal code is sent for this.
Your rights
Under PIPEDA, or Quebec's Law 25 if you're a Quebec resident, you can request access to, correction of, or deletion of any personal data Wildflower Archive holds about you. Quebec residents also have the right to data portability.
California residents have similar rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know what personal information is collected, to delete it, to correct it, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. To opt out of any sale or sharing of personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, enable a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal in your browser; we treat GPC as a binding Do Not Sell or Share request, and you can also decline the Advertising cookie category in our cookie banner. Residents of other US states may have comparable rights under their own state's privacy law.
Contact the Privacy Officer at contact@wildflowerarchive.com to exercise any of these rights; verified requests receive a response within 30 days.
Data retention
Contact correspondence is kept for up to 2 years. Google Analytics data, where enabled, is retained for up to 14 months. Cloudflare Web Analytics does not use persistent identifiers. Hosting logs follow Cloudflare's standard retention.
Security and breach notification
All traffic to this site is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) via Cloudflare. In the event of a data breach affecting personal information, Wildflower Archive will notify affected individuals and the relevant privacy regulator as required by law.
Children's privacy
This site is not directed at children under 13 (as defined under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA), or 14 in Quebec, and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Changes to this policy
This policy may be updated from time to time. Material changes will be posted on this page.
Contact
General questions about this policy: contact@wildflowerarchive.com. See the Terms for the rest of the legal detail.