Each species entry gives a common name, scientific name, family (English version and scientific), a brief description which includes important identifying characteristics of the plant, flowering season, habitat and range, and comments which are almost always devoted to the derivation of the scientific name.  Each species entry is given either one half or one full page.  A color photo accompanies each entry, and occasionally a small inset photo is added to show flower details, habitat, fruit, or color variation of the flowers.  The photo quality is usually very good, some are excellent, and a few are mediocre to poor.  Some of the latter could have been quite useful if they had been judiciously cropped and enlarged to fill the available space.  And while the inset photos are usually helpful, often the subject chosen requires more space to be meaningful in an inset which is less than one square inch.

For example, Large-Leaf Avens (page 165) has a page of its own, and the photo space covers about 40% of the page.  The main photo shows the flower just large enough, and a nice assortment of the foliage so you can see its arrangement.  An inset has been added to show what appears to be the fruiting inflorescence—but the picture is so tiny as to be nearly useless.  If that were the only space available, one might say that it is "better than nothing."  But the bottom of the page is one quarter blank, and the designer could have easily have provided a fruit detail that was at least four square inches in size.  Alternatively, the left side of the main photo is a bit dark with part of the leaves shown out of focus, and that half could have been cropped in favor of the fruit detail with no significant loss in quality of the main image (and the fruit detail would have had something over seven square inches of space).  So there are some design issues which could have been handled better, though overall it is certainly a fine book to flip through.

Fortunately, none of the images are super-closeups that show parts of the flower in unrecognizable field detail, and all seem to use natural lighting so you get a sense of its habitat.

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.