Wildflowers of the Canadian Rockies

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This is a pretty fair field guide — but not an exceptional one.

The arrangement is the traditional one: by flower color. The illustrations are full-color photos, which are certainly of good quality but not outstanding. A combination of photos and sketches (to show points not clear in the photos) would have been preferable.

One of the guide’s strengths is the arrangement of text next to the photo to which it applies. Nothing’s more frustrating in a field guide than having to locate the illustration in one part of the book and the description in another. Some of the text’s general-interest bits constitute another strong point in the book’s favor. Information on how people and even animals use a flower is not essential to its identification, but it does add greatly to the enjoyment of the flower-finding hobby.

The book contains descriptions and photos of 228 flowers, including both common and rare species. In addition to the usual botanical data (height, color, family, scientific name, season, fruit, etc.) Scotter points out in which of the Rocky Mountain parks the flower is most likely to be found. A map, an explanation of vegetation zones, a glossary, and an index are all useful additions to the work.

While there are flowers unique (at least in Canada) to the Rockies, the distribution of many of our flowering plants is so widespread that readers in all parts of Canada will find the book includes species familiar to them.

Thirteen habitat photos, in color, make the book something of a souvenir of the Rockies’ parks.