Looking for good plant guide books

[johnspenn]

A good tree guide book, mushroom guide book, flower/general plant guide book, all for the southern Appalachian area, and more specifically north Georgia.

Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

[Tipi Walter]

Years ago I learned everything from the Peterson guides---both the wildflower and the Edible plant books.

[MuddyWaters]

Plants can be quite difficult to identify specific ones with certainty using guidebooks. Ive got some Petersons guides...it gets complicated trying to ID specific trees. They use the buds and scales and stuff.

I once considered oaks to be red, white, or live, with a couple of variations, theres 58 different oak species in my guide to eastern trees. Ill stick with red, white, and live.:)

Often the common names we have called things our whole lives are incorrect too.

[perrymk]

I purchased these for my eventual thru hike (2020). They are pamphlets.

Appalachian Trail Trees & Wildflowers: A Waterproof Pocket Guide to Familiar Species (https://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-Trail-Trees-Wildflowers-Waterproof/dp/1583556680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483382691&sr=8-1&keywords=appalachian+trail+pocket+naturalist+guide )

Appalachian Trail Wildlife: A Waterproof Pocket Guide to Familiar Species (https://www.amazon.com/Appalachian-Trail-Wildlife-Waterproof-Naturalist/dp/1583557156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483382691&sr=8-2&keywords=appalachian+trail+pocket+naturalist+guide )


I've looked up things in the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Florida (https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-Field-Florida/dp/067944677X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483382875&sr=1-1&keywords=audobon+field+guide+florida) when I'm hiking the Florida Trail. This is an actual book, not a pamphlet. I would imagine they have one for whatever area you are interested in.

[Traveler]

Unless you want to haul around some good size reference books, Peterson tree guide books should serve you well to identify trees. I have their books on trees, shrubs, and plants which are helpful. I am not sure I would ever eat plants or mushrooms identified from a book though. Plants and especially mushrooms require a more nuanced hunt that someone who has done it for a while is probably a better source of information combined with a book.

[rocketsocks]

Unless you want to haul around some good size reference books, Peterson tree guide books should serve you well to identify trees. I have their books on trees, shrubs, and plants which are helpful. I am not sure I would ever eat plants or mushrooms identified from a book though. Plants and especially mushrooms require a more nuanced hunt that someone who has done it for a while is probably a better source of information combined with a book.
Done it "awhile" being the operative word

[Traveler]

Done it "awhile" being the operative word

"That mushroom over there is probably ok, I saw a squirrel eating one just like it yesterday"

[imscotty]

Just in case readers of this thread cannot detect sarcasm, I feel compelled to state that Traveler's comment above is made in jest. That squirrel may be deader than a doornail by now.

The best recommendation for mushroom identification, I think, is to join a local club. I belong to the 'Boston Mycological Society' and they have been extremely helpful. With a little experience you can safely identify several edible species and have some fun. I never consume a mushroom whose identity I am unsure of!

Peterson's guides are a great start has been stated. But for wildflowers, I much prefer the Newcomb's Guide for its dichotomous key. I highly recommend Newcomb's over all others...

https://www.amazon.com/Newcombs-Wildflower-Guide-Lawrence-Newcomb/dp/0316604429

[Pringles]

If you're trying to identify every tree you see, or every flower, then what the earlier posters have said is great. If you're new to the area and have no idea what that pretty pink-ish flower on that bush over there is... then the Audubon Field Guide to the Southeastern States might be what you're looking for. It's a little bigger than a whiteblaze (maybe 6 inches by 4 inches) and covers flowers and trees and bushes and animals and bugs and snakes and rocks and fish and whales and stars and birds and weather and... . None of it is in detail, but for the more common things in an area, you'll get a picture and a little description. I don't know how much it weighs, but it probably doesn't weigh any more than any of my subject specific guides, and it's helped me figure out what most of the things I see are likely to be. The coverage isn't exhaustive, but then I'm not usually trying to identify weird or exotic stuff. There's also an older set that's out of print that looks at different "environments." (You can get them used/new off of Amazon.) The one called Eastern Forests would be sort of similar, but for the whole set of eastern forests, from waaaay south, to waaaaay north. That one weighs more, but not by a lot. It also has color photos, and little descriptions, AND a fairly detailed discussion of the different elements of an eastern forest--Oak-hickory forest, Maple-beech forest, etc. The different plants and animals and "things" would then be identified as being likely to be seen in one or more of those types of forests. There's also a Peterson Guide to Eastern Forests (don't remember the specific name). It doesn't have the pictures, but it does have drawings. It's a good book, but I don't use it to identify things, as I can never find what I want when I want it. But that might just be me.

I remember climbing to the top of the ridge, and finally getting to Chestnut Knob shelter, and opening my Field Guide to the Southeastern States. After looking up what I had looked for, I just started turning pages and that's when I realized the guide had whales. I had carried a book that helped identify whales up that mountain, and I was just positive that was why I was exhausted. And yet, I still carry one on almost every hike.

[johnspenn]

Thanks for the recommendations, folks. I'm not above trying to eat a plant or root or something along those lines, if I'm reasonably sure it's not poisonous, but I'm definitely not going to try any fungi, for obvious reasons. I would like to be able to put a name on some of the more exotic ones I encounter, though, even if it's not exactly correct lol.

I'll shop through this list and pick out a few good guides. If anyone else has suggestions, keep em coming! Thanks again!

[Greenlight]

The internet.

http://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.cfm?number=B1339


A good tree guide book, mushroom guide book, flower/general plant guide book, all for the southern Appalachian area, and more specifically north Georgia.

Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

[Traillium]

I carry perhaps 50 field guides with all the time. Daytripping, thruhiking, paddling …
All of them electronic on my iPhone.
There is a distinct dearth of electronic plant guides. The four-part Audubon flower/bird/mammal/tree is the best by far IMHO. But it covers virtually the whole continent north of Mexico — so it's often only good enough to get somewhere near the genus level, i.e., goldenrod (instead of clarifying which of the hundreds of goldenrod I'm walking through).
Electronic bird guides are excellent, as are astronomy guides — because in each case there's a great deal known and there's enough of a market to justify extensive app development.
The Audubon series are uniformly the best — or close — of what's available.
There is a new class of field guide apps appearing of late. They include eBird, Bird'sEye, Dragonfly ID, and Map of Life. What's new and powerful about them is that they are set up to use the developing online databases of specific natural history observations and research. Dragonfly ID (related to BirdsEye) is based on user-submitted data. I've submitted my personal data to both projects, and use them often.
There's a good mushroom guide that includes edibility documentation and cautions: Roger's Mushrooms Pro.
(I second the recommended Newcomb's wildflower guide if you feel the need to carry dead-trees. Although I still find the original Peterson Wildflowers so helpful because it is specifically organized around understanding the recognition of plant families — which is often very helpful in getting an idea as to what I have in hand.)
On my thruhike of the Bruce Trail last Spring, I did occasionally miss having a dead-tree guide along. I missed having a Ferns book in particular.
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As for the flowers, the only useful dead-tree guide for me would have been The Flora of Michigan, which would have been the single heaviest item other than my pack. Several times I sent photographs back to my wife and to botanist friends for their assistance in getting me details that were bothering me in not knowing. "What's this?"
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Mostly I took sequences of pictures detailing what I wanted to identify and then researched them at stopovers or when I finally got back home.
(Don't get me started on weather apps … There are some outstanding ones! I'll stop after I mention RadarScope and Storm …)

“There's no stigma to being a botanist."

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