Below is a sample of my wildflower photo collection. The flowers below are from the United States, but there are more wildflower photos in the pictures from my trip to Greece in May 2016.
I am an amateur photographer and only use an iPhone for these photos, which sometimes makes it a challenge to zoom and get a good focus. Any photo taken since 2010 was taken on either my iPhone 4, iPhone 5S, or iPhone 5SE (since September 2016).
Generally, I use the common name of a flower instead of the scientific name, as I don’t have the expertise beyond a book to understand the exact details between one species or another. My personal interest is also less in the science of a flower, and more in the unique colors, shapes, and seasons that they appear. When I can’t identify a flower with these books, I can usually get a lead by running a Google images search to find wildflowers of a particular color within the region that I took the photo.
If there are errors with my identification, you are welcome to comment on the blog post linked via the photo, or contact me here. If you have a preferred book that you would recommend for identification, I would love to hear about it.
Here are a few books that I use for various locations where I photograph flowers:
- For identification of flowers in Pennsylvania and nearby states, I use the Peterson First Guide. Based on color drawings, it is an easy-to-use pocket-sized book that names most of the flowers I have encountered in the Mid-Atlantic region. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to get started with wildflower identification.
- For Colorado wildflowers, I use the Rocky Mountain Wildflowers (Colorado Mountain Club Pack Guide) photo-identification book.
- On my 2016 trip to Greece, I took an old copy of Flowers of Greece and the Aegean (William Huxley Anthony; Taylor)
