ID to wildflowers

I found a book to take out in the field with me when I'm prowling. It is the Guide to the Wildflowers & ferns of Kentucky by Mary E. Wharton & Roger W. Barbour. Now I can figure out what I'm looking at out there.

That's a great book to have! I got mine for Christmas 2 years ago, a fantastic resource.

Doug

Thanks Doug. I'm having lots of fun with it.

That's great, marti. I use my Missouri Wildflowers book all the time. Sometimes (when I remember!) I take it in the car with me when we are driving out of town, so I can look up any new wildflowers I see as we go.

It's fun to look up the wild flowers and see what they are.

Wharton and Barbour also wrote a wonderful book called Trees & Shrubs of Kentucky. I highly recommend that also.

Teresa

I'll check it out and thank you.

Hi Marti, do check out the trees and shrubs book for Kentucky. For ImaMes, I can recommend Don Kurz' Shrubs and Woody Vines of Missouri; it is phenomenal. The only thing about that is that it has drawings, not photos, but they are wonderful drawings. Be sure to get the full-sized Shrubs & Woody Vines of Missouri, not the pocket guide which is much abbreviated. The full-sized book really has the info you need to positively ID plants.

In case anyone is wondering why a Minneapolis girl knows about these field guides for KY and MO, I'll tell you that I have them because I am writing and photographing a series of photo ID guides for wild berries and fruits (being published by Adventure Publications), and the books are divided into 3-state areas. The first covered my home turf (Wild Berries & Fruits Field Guide of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan); that came out on 2009. This spring, the second one was published: Wild Berries & Fruits Field Guide of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. Then this year, I traveled to Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to research and take photos for the third book in the series, which will cover those states; that one will be out in spring 2011. Anyway, in the course of researching for these books, I bought darn near every guide book I could find for each area! So I know which ones are good.

If anyone is interested in seeing these books, they are on Amazon.com and in some local bookstores; they're published by Adventure Publications, who is probably the publisher of the Wildflowers of Missouri book noted above (hard to know if that's the same book; the Adventure one is by Stan Tekeila). Northern Trails Press website has sample pages from the books, if you want to see what they look like.

Teresa

Teresa - How cool that you are doing photo ID guides! I'll have to look into the IL/IA/MO one. I have the full-size Shrubs and Woody Vines book you mention. And, yes, it's wonderful, too. I have used both books a lot. The MO Wildflowers book I have is by Edgar Denison. It is sold by the MO Dept. of Conservation, and is also available on Amazon.com.

I also have the Trees and Shrubs of KY and it is indeed another valuable resource.

Doug