Bears Ears is in Bloom!

[Stephanie B]

It was my intent to label to each species (a way to force myself to finally learn the names of the different flowers), only to find that we don't have a "flower book" for the southwest. This will be remedied! Any suggestions on which book to get?

 

[Yvonne]

wow, love all the flowers!!!

 

[Miya]

Gorgeous! Gorgeous! Gorgeous!
Such unique flowers (to me). Thanks for sharing! Those purple ones, with a horn...look like a unicorn, just saying..

 

[Brendan S]

Great pics! Re: books, I’m kinda down on most “wildflower” books because they usually leave out way too many species. Part of my work is making species lists for project areas so here’s my go-to plant resources:

1) An actual comprehensive key. Welsh’s A Utah Flora or Ackerfield’s Flora of Colorado. Can be a bit overwhelming at first but you learn a lot and it’s the only way to nail down a lot of species.

2) https://www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/ has an impressive number of species, multiple picture, good search function, and good descriptions. This is usually enough to ID most things and is kinda what you’d hope a wildflower book would be.

3) http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/ has maps for all herbarium specimen collections as well as high res scans of collected specimens. It’s a perfect check to see if your plant in question occurs where you found it as well as seeing lots of examples of that species. the search on the site isn’t great but I usually just google “(species) seinet” and it’s your first hit.

4) Utah Wildflowers app. Impressively comprehensive number of species, though it doesn’t have much info or descriptions for some species. Great resource in the field though for checking maps and a few pics. https://www.wildflowersearch.org/search?page=Apps

 

[chandlerwest]

I would have been positively giddy if I had come across the one that includes your finger! I have had some luck using this website
https://wildflowersearch.org/. Oh, @Brendan S has this as his #4