The Audubon Society field guide to North American wildflowers, eastern region

by William A. Niering

Other authorsNancy C. Olmstead (Joint Author.)
Paper Book, 1979

Status

Available

Call number

582/.13/0974

Collection

Publication

New York : Knopf : distributed by Random House, c1979.

Description

Text and 700 color photographs provide detailed identification information on more than 600 species of wildflowers, with notes on more than 400 others.

Media reviews

Audubon
Excellent field guide for children and adults. Easy to read and locate information. I have learned a lot from all Audubon field guides and have all of them on my phone as well as hard copies of each field guide.

User reviews

LibraryThing member melannen
These were the field guides I learned from as a wee one. They have a front section of beautiful color photographs, arranged by color and shape, which cross-references to a textual section in the back, which is organized taxonomically. I have to confess that my affection for these is mostly
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nostalgic; I have rarely had luck using the plates to identify plants, because they often don't show growth habit or foliage very well, and sometimes don't even provide very good context for size. Sometimes two plants on the same page with very similar flowers will have been photographed in completely different ways, which makes it difficult to compare. They also lean toward the showier and larger plants, and leave out a lot of weedy, roadside/lawn species. They are very pretty, though, and the descriptive sections at the back are actually quite good. It's possible that I'm biased because all the common plants that can be identified out of here are ones I'd already learned by heart while I was stil pre-literate!
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LibraryThing member angelthreads
My only complaint is that I would like it to be of the Southeastern US
LibraryThing member QueenAlyss
This is a great comprehensive book for wildflowers. I enjoy using it and it's very easy to use.
LibraryThing member janemarieprice
These are great guides and anyone who is interested in nature should have the entire collection. I love being able to identify things I have seen or taken pictures of easily.
LibraryThing member iayork
Excellent Guide, Easy to Use: I have another wildflower guide which I tried using and was very frustrated with their drawings and color plates. I bought this guide out of desperation---and am completely satisfied. Its simple and easy to use. The flowers are easier to identify with color
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photography, complete with close up caption. Descriptions are listed later. Not everything is jumbled together, so that your'e fumbling out there around through so many pages. So easy to use. The flowers are more generalized than specific---you won't find 50 examples of a violet--but you'll find several at best. It depends on how detailed you want to get. Quick, ready to use guide that fits perfectly in your husbands fishing vest or in a backpack. Go for it!
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LibraryThing member Devil_llama
Like all the audobon guides, this is highly usable, portable enough to carry in the field, and contains good descriptions of the species.
LibraryThing member nbmars
This guide covers the most common wildflowers and weeds of the Eastern Region of North America. Entries are grouped by color and shape to aid in identification, with over 700 full-color pictures. The caption under each photo provides common name, dimensions, and page reference. The page numbers
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take you to more detailed descriptions grouped by family and species. Helpfully, these entries are cross-referenced back to the page of each picture.

Under the detailed entry, you learn the family of the wildflower or weed, description, flowering period, habitat, range, and comments. In spite of having both a small picture and a small description, I still couldn’t differentiate among many of the entries, and was occasionally perplexed. For example, there is an entry for poison ivy, but not poison oak. There is an entry for poison sumac, but it does not appear in the index. Many of the flowers look too much like one another for a novice like me to be able to make a successful identification, and in spite of the large number of items included, there is always a chance the one you want will be missing.

Nevertheless, it is still better than no guide at all, and the size of the guide is convenient for carrying around in your backpack while out and about.
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Language

Original publication date

1979 (copyright)

Physical description

863 p.; 20 cm

ISBN

9780394504322
Page: 0.2173 seconds