Northwest Mountain Wildflowers

Northwest Mountain Wildflowers is a field guide adapted by Daniel Mathews from his book, Cascade-Olympic Natural History, originally published with the Audubon Society of Portland. The app also incorporates the flowers from Mathews' Rocky Mountain Natural History. In all, it covers a region stretching from Vancouver Island to Wyoming's Wind River Range, and from the northern Oregon Coast Range to Jasper National Park. It identifies 550 species and illustrates them with 926 full-screen photos—far more than were in the books.

The flowers aren't just identified: you'll find pages and pages of fascinating natural history, biographies of the naturalist-explorers the plants are named after, help with pronouncing and understanding the scientific names, and more. Here's some of what others have said about the two books:

"Not only informative, but literate and shrewd."
—Gary Snyder

"In the high country in summer it becomes a near-bible, opening a world that grows more mysterious and beautiful even as its grandeur is defined and its intricacies known."
—David James Duncan

"As a park ranger I find myself reaching for it daily to answer questions. The writing is superb and one finds oneself reading it by a fire on a cold winter day just because."
—Geordie Romer, back-country ranger, North Cascades N.P.

This app uses Earthrover Software's field guide interface, which is far easier to use than other iPhone field guides.
You can choose among several paths to your plant: just check off your location and then scroll through thumbnail photos by color; use flower structure and leaf features for a precise search; browse in the index, viewing your choice of common names, scientific names, or both mixed together; look for them by plant family; or enter keywords and let the app search for those. Search results are viewable both as a list of names and a screen of thumbnail photos.

The app resides in memory. Hey, when you’re off in the mountains you don’t want to be dependent on a signal, do you? But when you’re back on a network, you’ll find direct links from the species pages to online resources.

For many nature buffs, this guide covers a big enough range to encompass 95% of their wanderings, not just their top five day hikes. Yet the range is small enough for the guide to speak with a Northwest voice, from enough regional experience and familiarity to get the geographic details right. The Northwest is an ecological continuum; a majority of the 500 species grow in at least 6 of the 7 states and provinces.

The region’s woody plants are covered in our companion app, Northwest and Rocky Mountain Trees and Shrubs.