I recently got an Amazon voucher and decided to update my library with two wild flower ID books: "Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland (Blamey, Fitter, Fitter)" [Wild Flowers] and "The Wild Flower Key (Rose)" [Key].
Both books seem to be well thought of from the Amazon reviews, both come at a reasonable discount from the list price, both are fairly heavy, but both are very comprehensive. Neither will go easily into your coat pocket, but I'd personally rather have a comprehensive guide with me so that I can make a good ID on the spot, than do so when I get home. Key covers what I'd class as plants and trees, while Wild Flowers also includes Grasses /Sedges and Ferns. (If you want a serious Tree ID book, I'd recommend "Collins Tree Guide".) Both books use colour paintings to illustrate the plants, which many readers argue is better than photographs, as different features of the plant can be grouped into a single illustration. Descriptions of the plants are adjacent to the pictures - i.e. no need to flick back and forth between text pages and picture pages.
If, like me, you aren't very knowledgeable you will probably find that Key is the better book to get you started. Much of the early part of the book is a key to help guide you to the right plant family, at which time you can start looking at the text /pictures for a final identification. The key is posed as a (long) series of questions that help you narrow down your identification. Most of the questions have two alternatives: e.g. if flower has 4 petals, go to Q5, if it has 5 petals go to Q6. Eventually the key suggests a plant family and you go to the main section for that family.
Using the key can take some getting used to, especially as your plant may not fall clearly into one of the two alternatives and, in the early stages, you will probably have to backtrack. You also need to get used to the botanical terminology (the book has a very good glossary) and the abbreviations that they use. I started training myself by using the key to identify flowers that I knew already, and then moved onto ones that I didn't know. The key can be quite laborious to use, but I suspect that once you have identified 20-30 flowers, you are going to get a lot quicker at it and know what sort of features to look for on the plant that you are trying to identify.
The alternative is just to flick through the book until you see a picture that looks similar to your flower, but that's what I had to do with my old "Collins Guide to Wild Flowers (1974)" so I wanted something that was going to give me a bit more guidance.
Wild Flowers is primarily a catalogue of plants, grouped into families, so for identification purposes you have to have a good idea of the basic family that a flower belongs to, or to flick through the book until you see something that looks similar. The book seems to be a little bit more technical than Key with slightly more detailed descriptions of some of the plants. It also includes distribution maps. It does have some small scale keys at the beginning of some of the plant families, but nothing as comprehensive as Key. I do, however, like having a second reference book so that I can cross-check my initial identification.
I'm happy with both books, but if I could only get one of them, I'd go for Key, given my limited knowledge. If I was more proficient in identifying wild flowers, then I'd probably be happier with Wild Flowers.
Hope this is of use.
Geoff
PS: If you're serious about flower ID, I'd also recommend getting a small hand lens. I've got one with 10x and 20x lenses. I use 10x most of the time, but 20x is useful for some of the smaller flowers.
Both books seem to be well thought of from the Amazon reviews, both come at a reasonable discount from the list price, both are fairly heavy, but both are very comprehensive. Neither will go easily into your coat pocket, but I'd personally rather have a comprehensive guide with me so that I can make a good ID on the spot, than do so when I get home. Key covers what I'd class as plants and trees, while Wild Flowers also includes Grasses /Sedges and Ferns. (If you want a serious Tree ID book, I'd recommend "Collins Tree Guide".) Both books use colour paintings to illustrate the plants, which many readers argue is better than photographs, as different features of the plant can be grouped into a single illustration. Descriptions of the plants are adjacent to the pictures - i.e. no need to flick back and forth between text pages and picture pages.
If, like me, you aren't very knowledgeable you will probably find that Key is the better book to get you started. Much of the early part of the book is a key to help guide you to the right plant family, at which time you can start looking at the text /pictures for a final identification. The key is posed as a (long) series of questions that help you narrow down your identification. Most of the questions have two alternatives: e.g. if flower has 4 petals, go to Q5, if it has 5 petals go to Q6. Eventually the key suggests a plant family and you go to the main section for that family.
Using the key can take some getting used to, especially as your plant may not fall clearly into one of the two alternatives and, in the early stages, you will probably have to backtrack. You also need to get used to the botanical terminology (the book has a very good glossary) and the abbreviations that they use. I started training myself by using the key to identify flowers that I knew already, and then moved onto ones that I didn't know. The key can be quite laborious to use, but I suspect that once you have identified 20-30 flowers, you are going to get a lot quicker at it and know what sort of features to look for on the plant that you are trying to identify.
The alternative is just to flick through the book until you see a picture that looks similar to your flower, but that's what I had to do with my old "Collins Guide to Wild Flowers (1974)" so I wanted something that was going to give me a bit more guidance.
Wild Flowers is primarily a catalogue of plants, grouped into families, so for identification purposes you have to have a good idea of the basic family that a flower belongs to, or to flick through the book until you see something that looks similar. The book seems to be a little bit more technical than Key with slightly more detailed descriptions of some of the plants. It also includes distribution maps. It does have some small scale keys at the beginning of some of the plant families, but nothing as comprehensive as Key. I do, however, like having a second reference book so that I can cross-check my initial identification.
I'm happy with both books, but if I could only get one of them, I'd go for Key, given my limited knowledge. If I was more proficient in identifying wild flowers, then I'd probably be happier with Wild Flowers.
Hope this is of use.
Geoff
PS: If you're serious about flower ID, I'd also recommend getting a small hand lens. I've got one with 10x and 20x lenses. I use 10x most of the time, but 20x is useful for some of the smaller flowers.
