Pocket Naturalists Guide to Washington Wildlife Book

I got this to help ID some wildflowers I photographed during a recent vacation back East. While I was there I relied mostly on the Peterson and Audubon guides to the eastern US, which are decent, but lacking in some key areas upon which this guide improves. Like the Peterson guide, it approaches comprehensiveness for the region, and like the Audubon guide, every single species has a color photograph. Unlike either of them, every species has a range map on the same page as the photo (no annoying flipping back and forth), which also shows seasonality using color (not immediately obvious but learnable). Every photo also has a scale bar showing the actual size of the flower. Scale bars and range maps are excellent visualizations that more field guides should employ, especially botanical ones. The flowers are organized by color, then by morphology and family. The back cover has a ruler (yay!), but it's not in metric (boo).

My only real problem with this book is that while they list the families shown at the top of each page, they use common names without the additional scientific names ("Rose Family" instead of "Rosaceae"). If you care enough about botany to learn your families, you will probably know the scientific names instead ot the ambiguous common ones. I was flipping through the white section looking for Polygonaceae and it took me a while to realize they call it the "Smartweed Family." There also isn't much in the way of natural history, just morphology and habitat. This is one area in which the Audubon guide has this one beat.

Overall, this is one of the best pictorial botanical field guides I think I've used. I wish we had some regional guides like this for CA.