Getting serious about wildflowers?

Sunset, March, 1989

Many wildflower fans will want additional help identifying plants they see on the hikes described on pages 86 through 95. Field guides, docent-led walks, and native plant display gardens are all good ways to learn more.

As you walk, you may see flowers you're tempted to take home. Picking them, however, is both destructive (it makes it impossible for them to set seed for next year) and, in many places, illegal. It's also guaranteed to disappoint: wildflowers will wilt before you get to your car. But you can grow natives at home, and below we suggest sources for seeds.

Carry-along wildflower guidebooks

The titles listed here are illustrated paperbacks intended as field guides for the layman (experienced hands will want-and probably already have more sophisticated references). To the best of our knowledge, all are currently in print.

To help with plant identification, you may also want to treat yourself to a hand lens-available at scientific supply stores ($5 to $40). Focus one of these small magnifiers inside a flower, and it opens up a whole new world of color and form.

A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers, by Theodore E Niehaus (Peterson Field Guide series, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1976; $11.95). Arranged by color and flower form, and representing 77 plant families, this has few color photographs but excellent drawings of the many plants covered. We found this, overall, the most useful general guide-though the beginner may find it heavy on botanical terminology. Plant parts are illustrated on the endpapers, and the text includes a fairly simple explanation of how to "key" for plant-(amily identification.

Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers (Western Region), by Richard Spelienberg (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1979; $13.50). Though this book has good plant descriptions and many color photographs (some less than perfectly focused), it makes you rifle through too much extraneous material to be convenient as a California field guide,

California Spring Wildflowers, by Philip A. Munz (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961; $8.95). Line drawings are ordered by flower color, but color plates and their accompanying text seem to be presented randomly; this methodology problem mars a simple but authoritative book that is otherwise a good place to get started (Munz's 1959 A California Flora is the heavyweight reference in this field). Munz has also published, again through UC Press, the paperback guides California Desert Wildflowers, California Mountain Wildflowers, and Shore Wildflowers. All the books suffer from poor reproduction of some of the color photos.

Flowering Plants of the Santa Monica Mountains, by Nancy Dale (Capra Press, Santa Barbara, 1985; $16). This one is organized by family groups, so you're out of luck if you see a flower and don't already know what family it's in. But the wellwritten text offers lots of interesting extras, including often-fascinating explanations of the derivation of plant names and bits of early California history threaded through with information on Indian uses of native plants. The excellent photos are by members of the California Native Plant Society

Roadside Plants of Southern California, by Thomas J. Belzer (Mountain Press Publishing Co., Missoula, Mont., 1984; $8.95). This covers not wildflowers alone, but also trees and shrubs; the treatment of wildflowers is meager and apparently random.

Wildflowers, by Robert H. Mohlenbrock (Macmillan Field Guide series, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1987; $9.95). Flower color is the main organizing principle here (many photos show flowers only, with no leaves visible). The book covers so much territory that its skimpy habitat descriptions ("open areas") are too general to be of any real use; It also defines range on the basis of region&) classifications established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the climate zones in Sunset's Western Garden Book are more accurate. Wildflowers of Point Reyes, by Roxanna Ferris (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970; $7.95). This is useful beyond the Point Reyes Peninsula, since many of the flowers are widespread along the northern California coast, There are no color photos, but careful drawings by botanical illustrator Jeanne Janish make plants easy to identify.

Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains, by Milt McAuley (Canyon Publishing Co., Canoga Park, Calif., 1985; $16). Hundreds of excellent color pictures, by skillful plant photographer James P Kenney, are arranged by flower color and keyed to plant descriptions in the latter part of the book. Very precise habitat descriptions in the plant encyclopedia make this book especially helpful in the field.

You'd prefer a guide that walks and talks?

Most of the 27 chapters of the California Native Plant Society have local springtime excursions, led by knowledgeable members. Such walks are perhaps the easiest way of all to learn to identify specific plants. Our list includes some parks that are close to large urban areas (such as San Bruno Mountain and Edgewood, near San Francisco; or Charmlee and Topanga, near L.A.); these are often the sites of CNPS-led wildflower tours. Others of their walks are on private property-and not accessible otherwise.