1. Washington Wildflowers App
The Washington Wildflowers app (iOS or Android) will serve your purposes best when on a hike in the mountains. With more than 1000 species of our most common and showy wildflowers, including photo illustrations, range maps, and descriptions, the app is resident on your phone, so no cell signal is needed. The app enables you to search using easily recognizable features to assist in identifying unknown species.
Washington Wildflowers has more information than a day pack full of heavy wildflower guides. If you are travelling around the Northwest this summer, be sure to also check out the Oregon Wildflowers and Idaho Wildflowers apps.
2. Plants of Washington
For more comprehensive coverage, the Plants of Washington online image collection contains over 63,000 images of plants and lichens of Washington. Most species have multiple images, in many cases including photos of details needed to distinguish the species from others and range maps that can lead you into the specimen records for each species. The webpage also includes a “random access identification key” to assist in identifying unknown species.
This resource has been built by many individuals contributing photos; if you like wildflower photography and want to contribute your photos, we would be happy to have them! The image collection is accessible anywhere you have wifi or cell signal, although a desktop computer delivers the best experience.
3. Alpine Wildflowers of Mt. Rainier
If you are planning a visit to the alpine zone of any of our three National Parks, look for our Alpine Wildflowers of Mt. Rainier (or North Cascades, or Olympic Mountains) at the visitor center or select bookstores. These are lightweight, printed on waterproof, tear-resistant paper, and will survive being unfolded, folded, and jammed into your pack many times.
4. Flora of the Pacific Northwest
And lastly, the long-awaited second edition of Hitchcock & Cronquist's Flora of the Pacific Northwest (ed. by David Giblin, Ben Legler, Peter Zika, and Dick Olmstead) will soon be published by UW Press and is now available for pre-order. Learn more about the revision of the Flora of the Pacific Northwest in this video.
Enjoy the summer wildflowers. Before you know it, they will be gone and you’ll have another long winter to plan your hikes for next year.
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Dick Olmstead is the curator of the UW Burke Museum Herbarium and a professor of botany with the UW Department of Biology.
