I love the Audobon guides.
I found Meadow rue blooming in the woods near here today.
Some current natives in my Northern Virginia yard.
I also found one for trees and shrubs and one for birds. I'm painting a birdhouse gourd with birds and needed something to use to get the colors right. I can also take it into the field and learn what kind of birds I'm seeing. I guess I will have to start taking a pack into the field with me to keep my ID books in. That way when I see a tree, shrub, bird or flower I want to ID I can pull out the right books and look it up right on the spot. LOL
That's the idea!
Only, at some point the pack gets too heavy with books and a day hike feels like you're planning a three day trip.
We purchased the Audubon "field guide to the southeastern stAtes" to carry in the field. Yes, another $20 at the time (copyright 1999). But it has most of what we would expect to see both afield and just in the yard.
My bible is the Wasowskis' "Texas Native Plants; Landscaping Region by Region". I have a shelf of wildflower books, but have the misfortune to live in an odd eco-region - the westernmost finger of the sandy Texas Piney Woods before the limestone of the Edwards Plateau, but also influenced by our relative proximity to the black gumbo of the coastal plain. I find myself tempted by plants "officially": native to the dryer, hotter country west of us, now that global weirding is playing merry hell with the climate.
I am liable to play the wait-and-see game in un-mulched patches. This year's loveliest surprise was an Anemone berlandieri, just one, growing in the mulch of pine cones under an adolescent Winged Elm tree. It was only around for a few days - I suspect the deer ate it - but it is a perennial, so I shall look out for it next spring. My last year's delight was a dozen or so amaryllis-looking plants that had put themselves into a bed that normally gets enough moisture from the septic field. For about 3 years they had just grown and multiplied, but never flowered. Hoping that they would turn out to be Spider Lilies (Hymenocallis berlandieri), I started giving them a bit of extra water, and lo! They were, and they put on a two-week show last month, too.
I'm having trouble with uploading the images, so I'll post this as is and follow up when I have sorted out what's amiss. It feels good to be back here.