Wildflowers of Georgia, and Surrounding States
by Linda G. Chafin
2016. University of Georgia Press, Athens.
516 pages.
This is an all around, comprehensive, field guide for Georgia’s wildflowers. After the Introduction section, with it’s map of the book’s useful range, a list with a paragraph description of each of Georgia’s major ecosystems, there are tips on how to best use the field guide, how to use a hand lens, and the best wildflower viewing areas and dates in the state.
When you get to the field guide part of the book, each major species has a picture alongside a species description and habitat description. There are sooo many plants, and sooo many pages to thumb through that it might be more of a challenge to use than the Audubon guide, which is organized by flower color. But Linda Chafin gets around this problem by having a final section in the book, just in front of the index, that allows the reader to quickly scan a through a few pages of flower thumbnails organized by color. Each thumbnail has both the flower name and a page number. I have a flag on this section so I can access it quickly.