How to Know the Wild Flowers

The book that taught America botany by color: find your flower under White, Yellow, Pink or Blue, and read its name, its haunts and its folklore — the first field guide organized the way people actually look.

About the Book

1893Published
Mrs. William Starr DanaAuthor
353Flowers
352Pages on this site

How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893), by Mrs. William Starr Dana, was the first American field guide organized by flower color — white, yellow, pink, red, blue and purple — so that anyone could identify a bloom the way they actually encountered it. The idea was revolutionary: the first edition sold out in five days, and Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling were admirers.

Frances Theodora Parsons (her married name gave the byline) wrote each entry with its scientific and folk names, its haunts and season, and the legends and literature that had gathered around it — Thoreau and Richard Jefferies keep company with the botany throughout.

This digital edition presents the complete keyed text of the 1893 edition, browsable by color exactly as Mrs. Dana intended.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1893 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.