Sagebrush Country: A Wildflower Sanctuary

I lost my first copy of this book, so I had to replace it before the wildflowers started blooming. This is a wonderful book to have if you live or plan to visit the desert.

No this book is not as comprehensive as Hitcock and Cronquist but it is so user-friendly that it is an essential for travel in sagebrush country, anywhere in the great basin. It serves as a great starting point to find a genus when a more comprehensive resourch is available for further clarification. The addition of natural history (ecosytem descriptions) and some ethnobotany make it even better. The color photos are great for quick ids of more common plants. Here in Central Oregon it is excellent. With this book along with Andy MacKinnon's books, you can give you pretty good id coverage for most of the Northwest. Websites can fill in gaps and details effectively for most of us. Great for gardeners who use native plants as well. If you even know about this book, you will love it. All the copies I have seen have been well-used. It is a great bargain too. Highly recommended.

I have used this book in two places: the Columbia Basin sagebrushcountry just east of the Washington cascades, and in south-central Idaho. For the Columbia Basin this book is very good. Anything that catches your eye is likely to be included, despite the book's slimness. In central Idaho the coverage is not so good, and you will end up wondering if what you're looking at is in the book. Just remember, as with all small, easy to use plant guides, there are probably five times as many plant species on the ground, even in the Columbia basin, as there are in the book. The natural history coverage is reliable but not terribly extensive.In Washington I have found it's nice to have this in combination with the authoritative but unfriendly and jargon-ridden Hitcock and Cronquist flora. Taylor will get it for you if it's a reasonably common plant, or give you a good starting point for wading around in H & C, if there's any doubt.

This book is useful in many ways: as a field guide, reference, habitat identifier,uses of plants such as food or medicine (e.g. by local Native Americans), soil types, animals present, etc. It opens up the tremendous beauty of the steppe-shrub-sagebrush deserts of the West. Lovely photos. This so-called "barren land" is teeming with amazing diversity and color. It is also helpful for those of us attempting native plant (indigeous) gardens. I highly recommend it.