Pocket Nature: Flower Finding: Delight in the Splendor of Wild Blooms

By Andrea Debbink

Find peace and stillness among the flowers with this lovely pocket guide to observing, identifying, and appreciating wild blooms.

Explore the charmed world of flora with this delightful flower book, part of the Pocket Nature series. Learn when and where to look for wildflowers, how to identify different varieties, and what flowers can teach us, from fireweed's resilience to dandelion's adaptability.

This petite guidebook also offers creative ideas for appreciating blooms, such as making botanical art, writing poetry, meditating in nature, and arranging a beautiful bouquet when picking is appropriate. Flower and nature lovers and mindfulness practitioners will appreciate the appealing illustrations and thoughtful reflections throughout.

Take Flower Finding on your next nature walk or create a thoughtful gift for a friend or loved one by pairing it with new garden clippers or a vase of pretty blooms.

EASY WAY TO SPEND MORE TIME OUTSIDE: More and more people are turning to the outdoors to escape and unwind. Searching for wildflowers is an enjoyable pastime that gets you outside, moves your body, and calms your mind. With mindful activities sprinkled throughout, Flower Finding is more than a flower identification guide; it is also an invitation to spend more time in nature and away from screens and tech.

GREAT GIFT BOOK: Petite, gorgeously illustrated, and written in an inviting tone, this approachable guide makes a great gift or self-purchase for nature and flower lovers. And who doesn't love flowers? Package the book with hiking boots, garden clippers, a beautiful vase, or other books in the Pocket Nature series for a delightful anytime gift.

PERENNIAL & COLLECTIBLE: The topics covered in the Pocket Nature series are perennial—flowers, beaches, clouds, and sunsets will always be there to enjoy and admire. With new titles coming out every season, there will be ever-new opportunities to grow a charming collection that looks great on your bookshelf.

Perfect for: 

• Flower lovers and home gardeners
• Nature enthusiasts, walkers, and hikers
• Conservationists and environmentalists
• Mindfulness practitioners, meditators, and anyone seeking simple practices for stress management
• Anyone looking for a birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, holiday, or just-because gift for nature-loving family and friends
• Collectors of the Pocket Nature books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Mar 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781797225227

Andrea Debbink

Andrea Debbink is an editor, an author, and a master naturalist based in Wisconsin. She is the author of more than a dozen books, most recently Thrive Where You're Planted, and writes a monthly newsletter for nature lovers and conservationists called Natural Wonder.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The prairie thrummed with energy, thick with humming bees and trilling birds. The growing season had reached a crescendo, each plant and creature playing at full volume in the summer symphony. I was hiking a trail just beyond the edge of town, a short drive from my suburban apartment. To my untrained eye, the prairie was a bewildering tangle of flowering plants: all leaves, vines, and swaying blossoms. Like running into old classmates, some faces were familiar, but names? The golden blooms with the upturned faces might be common sunflowers, but they could easily be something else. There are a lot of yellow wildflowers. The green bulbs with sprays of purple petals were thistles, but what kind? And the plants with blossoms like tiny white stars? I’d never seen them before—or had I?

I pulled a wildflower field guide from my backpack—but not before I glanced up the trail to make sure no one was in sight. I don’t know why I was embarrassed about needing a book to identify plants, but I was. Maybe it was because I’d seen these flowers all my life. I should’ve been able to name them. As I covertly turned the pages, a woman in a canvas bucket hat came striding around the bend. Which one are you wondering about? she asked. Busted. I pointed and she said decisively: Wild bergamot. Then she told me that some people call it bee balm. It’s a member of the mint family—feel its square stem?—and that if I pinched one of its leaves between my fingers, I’d notice a sweet scent reminiscent of Earl Grey tea.

Soon after the woman left, my conspicuous book and perplexed expression invited another teacher. An older man—possibly a park employee or volunteer—ambled down the trail toward me. He carried a weed trimmer and his face shone with sweat in the August heat. He stopped, eyeing my field guide. Which one? he asked by way of a greeting. I pointed. Culver’s root, he said, then paused to catch his breath. Any more? I pointed again. He identified a few more wildflowers, then continued down the trail. I put away the field guide, resolving to commit the new names to memory.

Since that summer afternoon, my plant identification skills have improved. I’ve become a Master Naturalist in my state—a trained conservation volunteer—but I still need a botany refresher every growing season. Where I live, it’s easy to forget plant names because most plants disappear for several months each winter. I’m not alone in my former inability to identify common plants in my immediate surroundings. In fact, it’s becoming a more widespread problem. The fact that both people who identified plants for me on the trail were over the age of sixty is no coincidence. With each generation, as we retreat indoors and online, we’re forgetting the once-familiar names for the flora that shares our world.

But this loss of botanical knowledge is not inevitable—the information we need to remedy it is usually close at hand, if not from helpful strangers on a hiking trail, then in a book or app. There are many ways to learn the common names of wildflowers and other plants in our midst. But to learn, we must begin by paying attention. Or to say it another way, learning begins with mindfulness.