[.uk] Peterson First Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and ... (ISBN 0395906679)

Peterson First Guides: Wildflowers:
This publication personally helped me become more familiar with the wildflowers. It includes specs and descriptions of 188 wildflowers. To start off the illustrations in this field guide are very realistic. The addition of color helps the reader to identify the flowers and plants as they are in the wild. I personally found it difficult when using other field guides to identify the differences between various species of flowers that were in the same family. This issue is even more magnified when trying to decipher the difference in the field. An example of this is in the description of Black-eyed Susan and Coneflower. Excerpt from another field guide: Black-eyed Susan (R. serotina) Flower head 2-4" wide. Stem leaves slightly toothed or entire: stem covered with bristly hairs. Disk blackish brown 1-2' high... Showy Coneflower (R. speciosa) Flower head 2-4" wide. Stem leaves coarsely toothed or cleft: stem slightly hairy 1-4'high... The pictures of both of these flowers are almost identical and make it difficult to differentiate the two visually. Without having a definite example of both flowers in front of you and cross examining the two it would be difficult to identify. In Peterson's field guide you have arrows that point to key parts of the flower to accentuate the anatomical differences from its peers. The caption is also more informative. It gives some history on the plant along with the physical description. Excerpt from Peterson's field guide: Black-eyed Susan- In this showy composite, each daisy like flower, with its numerous golden-yellow rays and chocolate button, is carried singly on a slender bristly stalk. The leaves are also bristly or hairy. Although the Black-eyed Susan now grows in fields and open woods nearly throughout our area, it apparently was an early invader from the Midwest, reaching the Eastern Seaboard states among seeds of clover. The blooming season is from June to October...Coneflower has smaller more numerous flowers with fewer (8-10) rays its lower leaves have 3 lobes. Peterson's guide uses a color directory system. Each page corner is marked with a color that coincides with the color of the flower. This makes locating a specific wildflower that you sighted very intuitive. The other field guides I compared it to have a unusual style directory. The reader must first grasp how to use the book in order to attain the information in it. This esoteric format gives them a steep learning curve. Peterson's guide was succinct yet had a lot of information on the flowers that they featured. The only thing it lacked was the scientific names. Its small physical size made it an easy companion on the field. While the physical size of the book may not be a major concern, it is still an added bonus. It is small enough that if I happened to be doing something unrelated (ie. walking to the store) I could carry it with me and ID wildflowers that cross my path.