Wildflowers of the Mountain West

Wildflowers of the Mountain West

Richard M. Anderson
JayDee Gunnell
Jerry L. Goodspeed
Copyright Date: 2012
Published by: University Press of Colorado,
Pages: 300
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgpkf
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  • Book Info
    Wildflowers of the Mountain West
    Book Description:

    Many recreational hikers have stopped along the trail to admire a wildflower only to wonder what, exactly, they are looking at. Wildflowers of the Mountain West is a useful field guide that makes flower identification easy for the general outdoor enthusiast. Many available plant guides are too technical or cumbersome for non-specialists to embrace. Covering New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon, this book is perfect for the enthusiasts who has little botanical knowledge but would like to know more about the wildflowers they are seeing. Organized by flower color for easy reference, plant records include the common and scientific names, a description of typical characteristics, habitat information and distribution maps, look-alike species, color photographs, and informative commentary. In addition, the book provides a useful introduction to the Mountain West region, along with line drawings to illustrate basic flower parts, shapes, and arrangements; a glossary of common botanical terms; a quick search key; and an index. The book is spiral-bound, making it easy to bring along while hiking, backpacking, or biking, and stunning full color photographs make visual confirmation of flower type simple and straightforward.

    eISBN: 978-0-87421-896-1
    Subjects: Biological Sciences, Botany & Plant Sciences

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. v-v)
  3. Introduction
    (pp. vii-vii)

    In the summer of 2009, while leading a group of friends to enjoy mountain wildflowers, we noticed that many in our party had a desire to know the names and a little information about each of the flowers we were seeing. We also noticed that of the fifty pounds of books we lugged up the hill, most were too technical, had poor pictures, or were too cumbersome to make quick and correct identification of most wildflowers. This led to the three of us thinking about writing a field guide that would reduce the time spent identifying a flower and increase...

  4. The Mountain West
    (pp. viii-xxvi)

    The Mountain West, located between the Front Range of Colorado and the east slope of California’s Sierra Nevada, is home to one of earth’s most topographically elevated and biodiverse regions. According to numerous modern scholars, the plant species distributed throughout the Mountain West share a common genesis as a result of comparable climate and orogeny.¹ There is substantial evidence that indicates that climatic cycles during the geologic past have caused plants to migrate north to south, east to west, and along altitudinal gradients, as temperature and moisture have changed.

    The orogenic events that elevated and shaped the Mountain West did...

  5. WHITE FLOWERS
    (pp. 1-60)
  6. YELLOW FLOWERS
    (pp. 61-130)
  7. ORANGE FLOWERS
    (pp. 131-140)
  8. RED FLOWERS
    (pp. 141-156)
  9. PINK FLOWERS
    (pp. 157-204)
  10. PURPLE FLOWERS
    (pp. 205-240)
  11. BLUE FLOWERS
    (pp. 241-266)
  12. GREEN FLOWERS
    (pp. 267-270)
  13. BROWN FLOWERS
    (pp. 271-277)
  14. Common Botanical Terms
    (pp. 278-281)
  15. Bibliography
    (pp. 282-286)
  16. Wildflower Quick Search Key
    (pp. 288-293)
  17. Index
    (pp. 294-301)
  18. About the Authors
    (pp. 302-302)