Good Reads: Wildflowers Galore

A Florida native and botanist focuses on the blooms of the state’s coastal lowlands.

by Taylor Bruce

East Gulf Coastal Plain Wildflowers: A Field Guide to the Wildflowers of the East Gulf Coastal Plain, Including Southwest Georgia, Northwest Florida, Southern Alabama, Southern Mississippi, and Parts of Southeastern Louisiana

By Gil Nelson
$22.95
Falcon Guides
263 pages

Published as part of the Globe Pequot Press’ Falcon Guide series, East Gulf Coastal Plain Wildflowers caters to both the novice and seasoned flora finder. It provides an in-depth introduction that touches on pertinent ecological information of Northwest Florida.
When in the field, beginners will enjoy the book’s organization by petal color, and experienced botanists will appreciate the line art of leaves and flowers in the introduction plus the detailed plant descriptions found throughout the main section.

At the heart of the East Gulf Coastal Plain (EGCP) lies the Florida Panhandle. The entire EGCP comprises a 42 million–acre stretch of the Southeast. Gil Nelson, a Florida native, professor, botanist, and two-time Audubon field-guide author, knows the area from visiting it as both a weekend warrior and a research associate at Florida State University. What some people—especially those without a Ph.D. in plant ecology—look for in nature guides are clear plant descriptions paired with a good introduction to the region’s habitat and ecology. Nelson makes these two components paramount in his very readable and handy guidebook.

Most helpful is his choice to organize plant species according to petal color. Rather than a never-ending tome, what the reader gets is a focused look at more than three hundred of the mostly terrestrial herbaceous wildflowers that are common or endemic to this region.

In general, Nelson allows for an instructional read. The opening sections discuss how to group the region’s wildflowers, whether by distribution patterns, endemism (geographic nativity), or landscape growth areas. A welcomed by-product of his introduction is the defining of terrains with important terminology and nuance. Nelson guides the reader through such habitats as stark, salty sand dunes; floodplain woodlands; bogs; swamps; maritime hammocks; and clear-understoried pine forests. This quick tour marries the land to its flowers, featuring individual species and providing a road map to find them. The guide certainly surprises with its diversity in landscape and, thus, wildflower species.

Nelson’s vivid photography—the most practical necessity for a useful guide—provides color close-ups of all three hundred–plus species along with important identification facts. To cap off the scientific details of bloom season, physical description, and habitat, Nelson comments on the history of each plant, its medicinal and folk heritages, as well as common mistaken identities.

Nelson writes that nearly forty of the EGCP region’s endemic wildflowers can be found in two Panhandle areas: the Apalachicola River flanks and the westernmost lands of the Eglin Blackwater. He also calls the pitcher plant bogs and wet prairies, such as those found at Garcon Point and the Apalachee Savannahs Scenic Byway, places of the most “floristically interesting” and “showy” species.

With Nelson’s guidance, readers will find themselves on a happy afternoon drive while searching the grassy shoulders for species, identifying them, and taking pictures of their own to share.