My favorite wildflower identification reference is Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians.  My copy is falling apart (it held up well to the use / abuse I put it through over the years), and I had decided to get a new copy last year, only to discover it was out of print. It was out of print for about a year, with a reprint in the offing. The reprint came out a month or so ago, but was available only at a few locations (maybe only online at the publisher’s website.) I was pretty happy to discover over the weekend that it is now available again on Amazon; I’ve ordered my replacement copy.

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A product of the Tennessee Native Plant Society, this excellent and comprehensive field guide covers over 1250 species using 800 photographs and valuable descriptive text. While the focus is Tennessee, its area of coverage includes the entire states of Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as large parts of 13 other states. In addition to the description of the plants it has an interesting look at botany from a historical perspective of the region. While the main part of the book is organized by plant family, there is a color-keyed section of thumbnails that allows a quick scan for identification, and there are illustrated keys for 12 of the families.  The only downside I find to this book is  that in this era of rapidly changing scientific classification, the classification in this book, as in all print media, may be obsolete for some species. Even so, I consider this book to be a “must have” for wildflower enthusiasts in the covered region.