It is also possible, of course, that some of the charred remains are from local plants that burned accidentally, perhaps in a wildfire, and got mixed with the food remains. To test this, the archaeobotanist compares the charred remains in the flotation sample with the kinds of plants growing naturally around the site.

While the flotation sample from the Brazil site is very small, it did contain charred seeds of eight different genera, and bulb fragments of a ninth. These genera represent the same three environmental zones identified for the animal bones: grassland (goosefoot, fescue, brodiaea, and clover); riparian woodland (wild cucumber, blackberry, maygrass, and oak); and freshwater marsh (tule). Interestingly, the pits of manzanita berries were noted in the field screen residues. Today, manzanita is confined to the foothills and fringes of the valley, so the presence of these berry pits at CA-SAC-43 means either that the environment here was much drier at some point in the ancient past, or that the people living at the site were traveling or trading to the foothills for some of their food. The flotation study also showed that people were collecting and processing plant foods during all seasons of the year, though probably less during the winter, when fewer plants were available.

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