As the weather warms up, wildflowers will start to bloom. Lots of Kansas trails have some spectacular wildflower displays along the way, and in the book, we will have a list of the best trails for wildlife/wildflower spotting.

While you’re out on the trail, you can carry along a book to help you identify the different plants and flowers, University Press of Kansas has a great field guide. Or, if you’re looking to use something you probably already have with you, your Android smart phone or iPhone, you can use an app.

Written by the same author, Professor Michael John Haddock, who wrote the University Press of Kansas field guide, the Wildflowers of the Great Plains app is an easy to use, high tech way to ID plants and flowers in Kansas and the Great Plains. There’s a free version with 25 plants and flowers or for $3.99, you can check out over 500 species. You can search by location, habitat, flower color, or just browse by name.

Each flower or plant includes an image of it as well, with lots of the representative images from Kansas, like the Prince’s Plume here that’s in Gove County.

There’s also a quick section on plant morphology – flower parts, shapes, leaf attachments, etc. so in the description of the flower on the app, you can double check you know what you’re looking at out on the trail.

Bonus – the app works without cell signal, so you can still check out the flowers without having to be connected to the rest of the world.

What do you think of using technology out on the trail? And do you have a favorite Kansas wildflower? Let us know in the comments below.