Sierra Nevada Wildflowers

Rating:
Summary: Clear, easy-to-use guide with great pictures!
Review: This field guide to the wildflowers of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California -- one of the FalconGuide series -- is terrific. It first introduces you to the geology of the region, defining the types of habitat for the plants, and describes how to identify the plants, including wonderful, careful line drawings of types of leaves and flowers. The book itself is organized by color of the flowers (so the chapters are "Blue and Purple Flowers," "Red and Orange Flowers," and so on), which makes identifying them easier, since their most obvious characteristic comes first. Each of the 230 wildflowers included in the book has a picture and a description, habitat locator, and comment from the author. In addition, the book is very sturdy and well-produced, with excellent photographs of the plants and a strong binding. And here's a neat design feature: the corners are rounded, so they'll never become dog-eared. Up until now on hikes I've admired wildflowers in the abstract; this book makes it easy to appreciate more of what you see.