You could therefore use this guidebook as a wildflower trip-planning guide more readily than other field guides.  For example, if you've always wanted to see Leichtlin's Mariposa Lily, the book indicates you could hike the Faye-Luther trail in June to around 5000-feet elevation and have a reasonable chance of seeing it in bloom.  If that doesn't work, the author gives six other specific locations where it has been found, some with later blooming dates.  (Users should be aware that length of bloom varies with each species—some bloom for only about two weeks at any particular location, a few can bloom for months at a specific location; time of onset of bloom varies with yearly weather conditions—many plants will have extended blooming periods when conditions are particularly good, for example, or will bloom later than usual if a cold winter persists.  Therefore, finding a plant in bloom when you are looking for it depends a lot on your knowledge of the year's weather conditions and a lot on luck.)

In addition to the specific locations, each species entry gives a common name, scientific name, family (English version and scientific), a brief description which includes relative abundance, habitat, and important identifying characteristics of the plant.  A color photo accompanies each, and the quality of most of these is very good, some are excellent; but there are a few which are poor for identification purposes.  For example, if you don't already know what Torrey's Blue-eyed Mary looks like, the image in the book won't help much since it is not close enough to reveal much detail; and if you are a rank beginner, you might suppose that the short grey clustered leaves surrounding the Sego Lily in the image belong to the subject plant, and the text does not even clarify this by explaining that these plants actually have long, narrow grass-like leaves, and that those in the picture belong to something in a completely different family which that particular Sego Lily just happens to be growing among.  But these are the exceptions, and most images have the virtue of showing the plant in its habitat, with natural lighting.

Each of the 100 numbered entries includes a color photo, common and scientific names, name of the family, blooming period, and a paragraph of text which tells a bit about the plant, its habitat, and the derivation of its name.  (A separate section at the end of the book gives the distribution of each species.)  Since the book has no page numbers, the index references the entry number for each species.

The book does have some big drawbacks as an identification manual.  First, though all of the photographs are of good to excellent quality, they were poorly selected, because some are shown so close-up as to be unrecognizable, and very few show leaves and other structures which would immediately distinguish superficially similar species.  Example: Golden Yarrow is a shrub or subshrub usually a few feet high with golden yellow flower heads at the end of leafy stalks, the leaves divided into lobes.  In this book, the only photo shows the flower heads filling the frame, and the user in the field is not going to associate the image with the plant in front of him unless he gets very, very close to the flowers—for there is no image of the full inflorescence which is what initially attracts the eye and which for beginners would be less easily confused—and no images and little description of the leaves.

Another example: California Saxifrage is illustrated with a closeup of the flowers detailed enough to show the red anthers, but nothing to show that these same flowers are borne on the end of a leafless stalk springing from roundish leaves arranged close to the ground in a rosette.  Is this mentioned in the text, to make up for the limitations of the photo?  No; what little description of the plant that is in the text makes the mistake of calling the flowers "dime-sized".  The author was perhaps writing from memory, for the flowers are really half or less in diameter as our ten cent piece.  Over half of the text for this entry discusses the derivation of the name of the genus Saxifraga; while word derivations interest me, they tell you little about the plant itself, and I think that a book purporting to be an identification guide should give greater space to basic descriptive facts which would actually vindicate the publisher's back cover claim that the book has "Handy information on how to identify each species."  Sorry, but it doesn't do that, and the lack of identification information for many entries is a second drawback.

Still another example: Golden Eardrops includes a photo showing a large portion of the flower inflorescense, which is a good thing, and looking at it, you might expect to find those flowers on top of a one- or two-foot stem; there is nothing in the text to tell you that the plant can actually be four- or five-feet tall—though the description of the plant's fire ecology is quite good.  I further question whether the photo of another species is even properly identified: Fleabane Daisy (Erigeron foliosus var. foliosus) typically has only one or a few flower heads, but the photo shows no less than all or part of 16 flower heads densely clustered together.  A lot of Erigeron flower heads look alike, which is why it is important to show leaves, too, but the photo included shows none.  If it really is an image of E. foliosus it is very atypical, and thus unsuitable in this context.

As is standard with lay-oriented field guides, the plants are arranged by flower-color groups, with a separate section for non-flowering plants such as ferns and conifers.  Each plant covered usually gets a full page, but with a half page for some, and each entry includes common and scientific names (including authors—something many botanists insist are a necessary part of the name but which I believe have little or no value in a popular guidebook).  Also includes common and scientific names of the family; a nicely detailed description of the plant, with minimal technical terms (and these defined in the Glossary and often illustrated in the Introduction); flowering season; habitat and range; and comments, which could include tips for distinguishing the plant from similar species, traditional uses, threats to the species, and ecological notes.