A Field Guide to Wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains (Natural History Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Very Helpful, Compact Guidebook - Worth the Higher Cost
Review: Over a period of six days we hiked 41 miles on Teton trails across open stretches in Jackson Hole and through dark forests and over high mountain passes. Everywhere we saw wildflowers - not the same wildflowers, but a changing mix reflecting differences in microclimate, especially as we climbed above the tree line.

Fortunately, my wife was well-prepared and carried a copy of A Field Guide to Wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains, an excellent guidebook with full-color photos of 300 species of wildflowers scattered throughout the Rocky Mountains of North America. Only rarely did we encounter flowers that posed identification problems. (Useful hint: stopping to examine a particular wildflower is a perfect excuse for an unscheduled, but desperately needed rest break, especially at the higher elevations.)

Many guidebooks group the color photos together; the descriptive text is elsewhere and the reader is continually paging back and forth. The arrangement in Carl Schreier's field guide is especially useful for the hiker: the text and photo are on the same page making it possible to look at the wildflower, find the photo, and even read the text while continuing to move along the trail.

Ink drawings of each plant accompany the color photos to make identification easier. The relatively short overview (about 15 pages) highlights key anatomical features that help differentiate individual families and species of wildflowers. The detailed glossary of technical terms is quite helpful.

Schreier's guidebook (second edition, 2002) is widely available on the internet. Like many field guides, it is fairly expensive; used copies (1996 edition) can also be purchased.

In previous years we used guidebooks authored by Richard J. Shaw (Wildflowers of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks - ISBN 0-937512-05-2, and Plants of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks - ISBN 0-937512-02-8. They contain substantially fewer photos, but are less expensive.