“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
discoveries in chronological sequence, including location and time of year
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 |
| SHP | State Historical 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.
