Wildflowers of the Atlantic Southeast (A Timber Press Field Guide)

If you’re looking to identify wildflowers whether you’re experienced in plant ID or not, this is the book for you! It’s much faster than using a traditional pictureless dichotomous key and is very thorough. Highly recommend! So excited this came out

Wildflowers of the Atlantic Southeast provides an easy to use key which is separated by flower color by colored page margins which then key down to flower details and leaves. The beginning of the book has a brief overview of habitats and quick guide for leaves in the back. Descriptions provide only detail for identification since there is not enough room to add more! Of course, all the information needed can be found online in most cases.Be aware that the book only includes herbaceous flowers (which many will assume anyway). One plant I found listed strangely is Sarracenia purpurea. Only the subspecies S. purpurea venosa is listed with its southern range while S. purpurea purpurea is totally left out of the book (except for a photo in the habitat section).

Identification is based on flower color, then flower shape (bilateral or radial), then leaf form, leaf shape, leaf arrangement and leaf margin.Each entry has a Latin name, common name, family, photo, description and map showing distribution, abundance and native status.Photos are on outer edges of left and right page with identification characteristics printed along outer margin of page. For example in "White Flowers" the margin might show "Flowers radial with 4 petals; leaves deeply divided, alternate, segments toothed or lobed". Bad explanation, but use the "LOOK INSIDE!" feature, paging through until you get to the photos to see what I mean.This layout makes it very easy to page through the photos looking for your target flower.Front end pages have clear illustrations of flower parts and shapes, fruits and inflorescences.Back end pages have clear illustrations of leaf form, shape, margins, arrangement and parts.Photos are pretty good. Book is sturdy.Descriptions and maps are helpful, although took a while to find the meaning of the map colors (page 47 in my copy).I will find this book very useful, since I like wildflowers, live in Virginia and am not a biologist or botanist. Might have to order a second one to keep in the car.

I have the ebook version of this book. It's easy to use on your phone while walking the local trails. The search feature makes finding species easier than using an index in a hard copy. If you have a dictionary downloaded into you Kindle version, look up for those pesky botanical words is a definite plus. Photos are marginal but zoomable in the digital version so that makes them better than the hard copy that I've looked at.

Wanted to love this wildflower guide. Frustrating to use as photos of the plant’s leaves are absolutely necessary. That was the consensus from several expert and novice users.

Great book, only criticism is that photos are a bit small which sometimes makes ID of a plant a bit difficult. But overall a great guide, glad I bought it.

Like the information in this book

Good reference.