Collins Wild Flower Guide
This has great pictures, descriptions along with short helpful keys.
It covers flowering plants including grasses, ferns, sedges, rushes and club-mosses. However it is a bit heavy to be a field guide.
It is now in it’s second edition (2016).
The Wild Flower Key
This has great pictures, descriptions along with short helpful keys.
It does not include grasses, ferns, rushes or sedges, but is very well presented for use in the field. These are available in a separate book, which is too large to be a field guide but has even better illustrations and text.
Earlier editions are available with a different cover.
Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland
This has good illustrations and text and includes many garden escapes as well as grasses, sedges, rushes and ferns. There are no keys, but there are maps showing the distribution which is useful to exclude plants, even though the data is now outdated.
Some find the illustrations a bit garish, but it is liked as it covers the whole range of plants without being too heavy to be a field guide.
New Flora of the British Isles
Stace’s definitive work is now in its fourth and final edition. It is the “bible” for botanists and offers keys and descriptions of almost all the British Flora. It has no pictures, but has some diagrams.
If you are comfortable with botanical terms then this should be on your library shelf.
Earlier editions are available and the main differences are the name changes.
This is not meant to be a field guide!
Concise Flora of the British Isles
This is the reduced, field guide version of Stace’s main work. It contains keys which include more details and descriptions than in the main work, but little else.
If you are comfortable with botanical terms and happy to move from pictures, then this is a useful field guide to carry.
The vegetative Key to British Flora
This is a unique way to help with identification. It uses an innovative key which as the title suggests, does not need flowers. It works and is often used to differentiate between two species even for plants with flowers.
It is essential to read the instruction to gain the most from this book but it is something that many botanists carry in the field with them.
Harrap's Wild Flowers
This uses photographs to illustrate the plants very effectively. It is not as comprehensive as the other books and does not include some plants and many subspecies.
The descriptive text is excellent, conveying the distinguishing features and may have been used once or twice in this website.
The Concise British Flora in Colour
For many botanists of a certain age this was their first proper flower book and is still much loved. The colour plates are superb works of art and convey the essence of the plant. The descriptions are quite limited and the flower names are now out of date.
The story of its publication in 1965 is remarkable and worth reading about.
The Flora of Lanarkshire
This was written by the previous vice-county recorder Peter Macpherson. It is not a field guide but does give so much information about the vice county as well as describing where plants grow.
Wildflower Books
“What is the best wild-flower book?” is a common query and the answer is one that best suits you.
However, here are some books that many people find useful. None, by itself will meet all your needs but they are a good start. They are listed in no particular order.
Summerfield Books are a specialist botanical book shop who will give you great advice and service. They also offer a discount to BSBI members on some books, including the excellent BSBI Handbooks.
Books that are out of print are still likely to be available from Summerfield and other book shops.
Some of these books do not include the latest plant names, which have changed, especially over the last decade or so as genetics informs how plant species are related. For most purposes this really does not matter, because all of the names are mapped to the current plant names in more recent texts and in the BSBI database.