Stan Tekiela - Wildflowers of Minnesota Field Guide (Wildflower Identification Guides)

MINNESOTA AND WILDFLOWERS

Minnesota is a great place for wildflower enthusiasts! Our state is at the crossroads of three major vegetative habitats. Each of these vegetative zones contains a wide and often unique variety of wildflowers. Our upper Midwest location is unique because we have a western wildflower influence, an even stronger eastern influence and a strong northern boreal influence. All of this means Minnesota is fortunate to have an extremely diverse, often unique and certainly a very healthy variety of wonderful wildflowers.

The Wildflowers of Minnesota Field Guide is an easy-to-use field guide to help the curious nature seeker identify 200 of the most common wildflowers in Minnesota. It features, with only a few exceptions, the herbaceous wildflowers of Minnesota. Herbaceous plants have soft green stems and die back to the ground each fall. Only a few plants with woody stems have been included because these particular plants are very common and have large showy flowers.

STRATEGIES FOR IDENTIFYING WILDFLOWERS

Determining the color of the flower is the first step in a simple five-step process to identify a wildflower.

Because this guide is organized by color, identifying an unknown wildflower is as simple as matching the color of the flower to the color section of the book. The color tabs on each page identify the color section.

The second step in determining the identity of a wildflower is the size. Within each color section, the flowers are arranged by the size of the flower, or flower cluster, from small to large. A plant with a single, small, yellow flower will be in the beginning of the yellow section while a large white flower will be towards the end of the white section. Sometimes flowers are made up of many individual flowers in clusters that are perceived to be for rulers to help estimate flower and leaf size.

Once you have determined the color and approximate size, observe the appearance of the flower. Is it a single flower or cluster of flowers? If it is a cluster, is the general shape of the cluster flat, round or spike? For the single flowers, note if the flower has a regular, irregular, bell or tube shape. Also, counting the number of petals might help to identify these individual flowers. Compare your findings with the descriptions on each page. Examining the flower as described above should result in narrowing the identity of the wildflower down to just a few candidates.

The fourth step is to look at the leaves. There are several possible shapes or types of leaves. Simple leaves have only one leaf blade but can be lobed. Compound leaves have a long central leaf stalk with many smaller leaflets attached. Twice compound leaves have two or more leaf stalks and many leaflets. Sometimes it is helpful to note if the leaves have toothed or smooth margins (edges), so look for this also.