| s/y Nine of Cups Flowers of the World |
| Sources for Identifying Flowers... I was never an avid gardener. We usually had a vegetable garden when I was a kid and I hated weeding with a passion. David & I usually maintained a small veggie garden in Colorado as well as some easy-to-care for flowers... xeroscape do best in Denver where water is metered. Since we've been sailing, however, we're more aware of the different flowers we encounter and I'm much more enthusiastic about photographing and identifying them. I've purchased way too many books on the subject and none have been perfect. In NZ, I borrowed Stirling Macoboy's What Flower Is That? which covered NZ and Australia flowers, but it was set up as a pictorial dictionary so you had to know the name of the flower before you could find it or thumb through each page looking. At a second-hand bookstore, I found Illustrated Guide to Common Weeds of New Zealand which was terrific. I also purchased NWF Field Guide to Wildflowers (David Brandenburg) when I was back in the States and though specific to North America, it has served well for identifying flowers in the rest of the world or at least distinguishing families. In South Africa, we purchased Wildlife of Southern Africa (Vincent Caruthers) which included animal and plants and was pretty handy and surprisingly inclusive. I've relied heavily on the internet lots (when it's available) as well as local libraries and gardeners. On my "bucket list" when we finally resort to living on land again...have a flower garden! (and an herb garden, and an English cottage garden and a veggie garden and....) |
| I love finding and photographing flowers whereever we go. Unlike birds, they stay put when you're trying to photograph them other than the random breeze. I'm always amazed that flowers we saw growing wild in St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic are the same as some we've seen in Chile or on Easter Island or home in Colorado or New England. Obviously visitors (sailors of old), birds, etc. transport the seeds or sometimes the plants, but still it's amazing at how widespread certain species are. Some that are cultivated garden plants in one area, grow like weeds in other places and are considered a nuisance. Some are actually trees or shrubs...if they're colorful, they're fair game. Note that I'm definitely an amateur at this. I do my best to identify correctly, but sometimes it's difficult depending on the time in the flower's life cycle that I've photographed it. So...if you see a mistake, please let me know so I can fix it. We originally just lumped all of the flower photos together just like the birds, but there are so many now, we've decided to separate them by geographical area. Click on the area of interest to view flowers (wildflower and domestic) we found. We'll add more as we travel to new places. |
