Wildflowers of Texas

I’m sure the book is great. It’s hard to get over the poor condition it’s in. There’s no way this is “acceptable.”

This book makes it easy for beginners like me to at narrow a flower down to a certain color group, from there whittling it down by petals, leaves, etc. making it a guide that novices and pros alike can come to rely on for accurate flower identification.

I have LOTS of field guides. I take a lot of photos "in the wild," and have a pathological need to identify what's in the picture. Wildflowers of Texas scores high on several counts: Color coded entries. While the very best field guide format I've encountered is the Audubon guides, which not only sort entries by color, but also shape, etc. (taxonomic form?), I've found most guides out there sort the flowers by family. True, I'm getting good enough to know a mallow from an aster -- but, really, if I knew what the flower is, why need a guide? So, as far as the Texas specific guides I've encountered go, this one is the first I reach for, because of that first level sort. The other reason I rate it highly, and reach for it often, are Ajilvsgi's notes about the flower and plant: how it got its name, how it was used historically, and other interesting bits. Being a collector of eclectica, this falls right into my psyche. The pictures are also very clear and helpful. True, you wander into the yet another yellow composite section and identification gets iffy in a hurry, especially from a picture. But the AYCs give even the pros problems, so I don't feel TOO badly. Highly recommended (in fact, THIS one was purchased as a gift for a flower-savvy friend of mine). That's pretty high praise, that I would buy it to give away, eh?

I have found this wildflower ID book extremely useful to my students because they do not have to wade through the selections by families but can narrow down their searching and time by going directly to the color section for the flower they have. The page size of the book makes it more useful for field ID than bigger sized books. A few of the photos lack definitive pictures of leaf, bud, and stem structures and may give a mistaken impression of flower size.

This is a great reference manual that shows actual pictures of the plants with a full description and even some interesting facts about the plant itself. I use this book a lot when trying to identify roadside plants or the wild ones in my yard. The book is separated into sections by flower color to make it easier to look up a new plant.