Ted's World of Wildflowers

“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”  –Lady Bird Johnson

I do not purport to be a botany expert, and detailed plant-specifics are readily available elsewhere.  My objective merely is to share some original photographs taken on hikes and travels.  If a picture happens to help identify something, that's great.

These pages feature an inevitable duplication of content, although an entry occasionally is replaced by a newer specimen in the 'Best Of' section.  Two pages are updated regularly as new photographs arrive; yet the usual suspects keep showing up again and again, and one never can be sure what will be found on the next outing!  Also, some varieties simply are more photogenic than others, and I admit to being partial to certain favorites.

Place names are in California unless otherwise specified.


a connoisseur's collection of eye-candy

The Best of Wildflowers

discoveries in chronological sequence, including location and time of year


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The following legacy database — some 1,100 items in alphabetical order of variety — has been retained solely because of the hundreds of hours expended in its creation.  No updates will be made as of September, 2022.

If you would like to know what a hesperochiron looks like, for example, you can see one here.  If you would like to view a dozen varieties of clover together, this is the place.

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LOCATION ABBREVIATIONS

CTY County
ER Ecological Reserve
NF National Forest
NM National Monument
NP National Park
NRA National Recreation Area
NS National Seashore
RA Recreation Area
RTP Regional Trails Park
SP State Park
SRA State Recreation Area
WA Wildlife Area
WIL Wilderness Area
 

ABOUT FLOWER IDENTIFICATION

Exhaustive research of useful online databases such as CalFlora, CalScape, and CalPhotos, frequently has been a 'best guess' endeavour.  Is that flower an Arnica,  or a Balsamroot , or a Groundsel?   Wait; maybe it's a Ragwort  or a Butterweed.  This amateur has found the imprecise matching of photos and locations to be quite problematical.

More recently, subscription to a good AI-driven phone-app, PictureThis,  enables accurate identification most of the time just by photographing images on the computer screen!  Albeit imperfect and necessarily limited, this program's performance is vastly better than that of several other tested apps.

One program flaw is the current non-availability of many local variety designations, causing them to be lumped into a general category.  For example, "Royal Penstemon" includes the Azure, Roezl's, Showy, and Mountain Blue varieties; so there are considerable differences in colors and markings.  Another issue is that the program always will make its own 'best guess'; so it identifies, for example, Texas Bluebonnet Lupine, when that variety does not even exist in the state where the photograph was taken.

The upshot of all this is that a certain amount of educatated guessing still is being done.  On the other hand, perhaps I should stop bothering trying to micro-manage flower names; does anyone else actually care?  In any case, I surely have misplaced a variety or two; but I'm not going to worry much about that.  Should you detect a clear error in identifying a species, though, I would sincerely appreciate a note to that effect.

Images are available for download in 1024 × 768 JPEG format; a greater native resolution also is available upon request.  Feel free to use my photos in any non-commercial manner.

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