So true! It's very rare to find someone who actually knows more than a few kinds of wildflowers. I used to be like that once. As far as true wildflowers, I knew while young a "buttercup", a "dandelion" and a "bluebonnet". Later I found out that what I called "buttercup" was actually a primrose, not botanically a buttercup at all . And the "dandelion" I knew was actually a Texas Dandelion, not the plant that just about everybody else calls dandelion. At least the last one really was a bluebonnet! When late in my life I decided to get serious about college, I eventually ended up at a university that offered three kinds of plant courses that had field trips. I took the wildflower course and afterward the woody plant course. By that time, I had already been working on learning the wildflowers and had one book on Texas wildflowers. Those courses were the most enjoyable courses I've ever taken! With our copies of Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country in hand, we'd pile into the van most weeks during those courses and we'd go somewhere to look at and identify plants growing wild and collect plant specimens. It was an adventure! Some of my other courses might be horrendously difficult, tedious and boring, but not those! I don't think I ever missed one of those plant classes! I might mention that they weren't blow-off courses at all. There were quizzes every week and you really had to study hard to make that A or B! Then there were plant specimens that had to be pressed, dried and pasted into a notebook...with labels you had to make and fill out with info...those were turned in for grades. I heard years later that the university would no longer provide vans for the classes and the professor and students were just getting around in private vehicles for the field trips. It was after those that I joined a chapter of Native Plant Society of Texas and the Master Naturalists. Some of those people really know the native plants...and a lot of nonnative plants also!
