You're interested in wild flowers, you've found one you can't identify, and you've got a field guide. Now what?

If your book has a general key, you could start right at the beginning and try to work your way through until you find your flower. One of the easiest I could find used 12 technical terms in the very first question and the answers were all in Latin.

So perhaps not?

Or you could play 'snap'. Just thumb through all the pages of pictures until you find one that matches your flower, This (a) will take an awfully long time and (b) is not very likely to find you the right answer anyway. Did you know that there are at least 50 British wild flower species which are yellow with 5 petals?

Here's a third way: get the Pocket Guide to Wildflower Families. (Click on BOOKS in the menu, then click on the images to see what's in the book.)  If your species is quite a common and widespread one, you can follow that up with Wild Flower Flowcharts to guide you to the correct species. If not, it's now easy to find your way around a standard field guide with the knowledge you will have gained.

For a complete introduction to identifying wild flowers and the whole fascinating business of native plant-hunting try Flowers in the Field. This is the perfect companion to any field guide, taking you through the basics of field botany with lots of essential information, guidance and entertainment on the way.

When you've begun to crack wildflowers, you can move on to grasses: Start to Identify Grasses gives you a flying start the easy way – no lengthy keys and no peering through microscopes. Just study the diagrams and work through the flowcharts to learn 20 of the commonest species of grasses. Continue with Start to Identify Sedges & Rushes for Britain's most common rushes and 21 sedges. Then simplify and explore a 'difficult' group with Start to Identify Composite Flowers .