You know how when you're thinking about buying a certain new car you'll suddenly start seeing it on the road everywhere? Well, the same is true for Trailspotting and wildflowers .. we hardly noticed them until we started trying to identify them on the trail. Now we can't move for wildflowers along the trail, particularly at the higher elevations during these summer months.

Identifying the flowers you spot on your hike can be harder than you might first imagine and fellow hikers report mixed success with published field guides.

Thanks to the wonders of digital photography and the internet, along comes great wildflower identification chart courtesy of the Wildflowers North America Flickr Group which for us has the highest success rate of any identification method we can find. Unless you can get internet connection in the middle of the wilderness (iPhone, N95 possibly?) it doesn't make for a great field guide, but it is an extremely useful tool for pinning a name to a digital photograph once you get back home.

Tangents:
- Flickr: Wildflowers North America Group
- Books: "Pacific States Wildflowers" (Peterson Field Guides)
- Trailspotting: More Trailspotting Resources