Most wildflower guides use color as the primary
criterion for identifying wild species. The main color groups are white, yellow, orange and orange to red, maroon, pink (another big group), blue, and green. (Each guide has its own way of naming and organizing its color scheme, but this is the general pattern.) The trick here is that some of the colors are subtle and it may be hard to determine if the flower is one particular color or not. In these cases you will have to choose one of the colors and search the guides to eliminate one or the other color choices.
Once you determine a color, the guides usually divide up those plants by how their flowers are shaped and where on the plant the flowers are growing from (a spike at the top, from between the leaves etc.). Then they subdivide those plants by the actual number of the flower petals or shape of their seed heads. If you are using an illustrated guide, after you get to the point of determining all this, there is usually a picture of the plant you are trying to identify. |
