Most wildflower enthusiasts have several or more books on wildflowers in their libraries, but if you can only have one wildflower book in your pack, make it Rocky Mountain Flora.

Wildflower identification is a difficult endeavor. A common name in one region of the Rockies can be called something totally different someplace else. And scientific names have been jostled a bit over the years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The only answer to the problem is to have a horticulturist, who has spent his life hiking the foothills and mountains of Colorado with camera and notebook in hand, write a field guide.

Jim Ells spent 25 years working on his first edition of Rocky Mountain Flora. One of the many new features of this second edition is it now includes photographs of both the flower and plant to aid in identification. An additional feature of the second edition is that some of the photos from the first edition have been upgraded with the help of volunteer wildflower photographers.

Organized by color and then alphabetically by family name and genus, Rocky Mountain Flora has images of each flower and the entire plant, and detailed descriptions of stems, leaves, and flowers and includes the specific location, elevation, and time of the year the flower was found. A special feature called "LOOK FOR" helps with quick plant identification.