Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers: Field Marks of Species Found in Washington, Oregon, California, and Adjacent Areas : A Visual Approach ... Detail (The Peterson Field Guide Series ; 22)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I take this guide (and the Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers-- west) on all my field trips to identify wildflowers. Though Peterson has fewer real photos, it does have better aids to identify specific wildflowers, as it is organized by color, as well as number and types of petals. The sketches help me do a preliminary id on the wildflower.

Personally, I think the Peterson Guides are far more helpful than the Audobon publications. As mentioned in other reviews, Peterson uses illustrations organized by color and flower configuration. The illustrations are very well done. Audobon uses photos. The idea is that you match your specimen to the photo it most closely matches and follow further identification from there. The books are complimetary and work well together; however, if you can only choose one-- get the Peterson book. Overall, I have had much better success keying out plants with Peterson and repeatedly have found the plant I am looking for overlooked in the Audobon text. The truth be known, I doubt I will ever buy a Audobon plant book again-- perhaps they are better with birds.

Though this title may be a little pricy, it is a must have for residents of California, Oregon, and Washington. At any rate, any family within which there is a flower collecter, should have a copy of this excellent resource. Though my family originally purchased this title because of a biology project assigned to my daughter, it has since opened up an interesting world of the natural plant life of this area and even those farther away.

If you are not familiar with dichotomous keys (perhaps in a college science class) this might seem a little confusing... but start your flower search with the keys before you go to the drawings/plates. You will find your subject more quickly than trying to match pictures. I think this the flaw in the Audubon Series. Plus you get an education of sorts.

I just bought a new old copy of the book because my original 1976 copy was falling apart. I did this with great reluctance because over the years, I had created color plates with my colored pencils truly making the book even more useful. I spent many great days in the field finding and identifying wildflowers and then coloring my plates. Now... do I start over... or try to transfer the color plates to the new book? I got the vintage leather covered copy and it is magnificent. Think the vocabulary tough... get a copy of Phillip Munz, A California Flora and just start reading on any page...

This series of books is highly overrated. These may be the premiere wildlife guides but they are intensely irritating. This wildflower guide has some colored plates but a large quantity of line drawings leaving one puzzled as to what the plant might actually look like, even approximately.

An outline drawing may be useful to discriminate between very similar plants, but as a field guide one needs a quick way of seeing a plant and finding a reasonable visual match. After a coarse selection a fine selection would then be appropriate.

Why books of this nature are not in full color is a mystery. Are we expected to color-in the illustrations ourselves? The publisher is lazy -- excellent color printing is available nowadays.

I learned a lot from this beautiful collection of wildflowers. It showed me what were wildflowers and what weren't. I was impressed to learn how many were introduced from other areas of the world. A really nice addition to the home library.

The book is filled with lovely artists impressions of wildflowers. However, few of the flowers I have seen in the wild look like the depictions.

A photographer's input with photos of the flowers would be a great improvement.

I like the book and the topic, however the binding is is such bad shape that the book is useless in the field or for a more robust usage. Can this be fixed?

We own ranch property in Northern Ca and I became interested in learning more about identifying wildflowers on our property. Very nice photos and black-line sketches, organized by color of the bloom. I like to see color photos for all, but I understand that botanists cite color shifts in printing reproduction that could mislead people. Personally, I don't buy that if a good quality printing is obtained. An OK reference volume. Also, not every flowering plant is a wildflower...botanists also classify many as "weeds" which then might not show up in books like this. If you haven't found it already, I highly recomend the website [...]as a place to search for what grows in your particular area of CA. For example, a global search for Tehama County yields about 950 species of trees, flowers, weeds and grasses.

This book is an old friend. We bought a copy for a granddaughter who is in the Forest Service.