New Zion wildflower app brings expert botany to your phone
By Bruce Glisson
Just released in 2019, “Wildflowers and other Plants of Zion National Park” is a Zion wildflower app for nature enthusiasts and visitors to Zion and surrounding areas.
As you hike along the spectacular red-rock trails and canyons of Zion, the wildflowers and other native plants in Zion provide a diverse and beautiful up-close complement to the area’s incredible scenery. Due to its geographic location, broad elevational range, geology, maze of topographic nooks and crannies, and associated array of microclimates, Zion supports the most diverse flora of Utah’s five national parks. The app offers an efficient, portable means of identifying over 200 wildflowers and plants by combining photographs, written descriptions, and specific locational information.
Spring and early summer offer the most intense and diverse flowering seasons, but there is usually something flowering from March into November. The plant life of Zion is always active to some degree, and many plants can be readily identified year-round. Even a quick stroll along the Pa’rus Trail or hike up the Watchman Trail provides an opportunity to learn about many different plants included in this app.
Photos at the core of the app allow easy identification and hopefully will help to promote a deeper appreciation of the natural world and beauty and diversity of plant life in Zion.
The app is built around a searchable database that includes trail specific, geo-referenced locations for where and when to see various wildflowers. Mapped locations of common plants along popular established trails allow users to visit known locations for a firsthand look at particular plants (locational information is not yet available for all plants in the app and is deliberately not included for a few rarer plants and special places). The photos and supporting descriptions can help to identify plants beyond areas that have been mapped or outside of the park.
Once downloaded, the app works without a data connection, which is a useful feature in many areas in and around the park. The locational component of the app will show your position relative to various plant locations wherever there is access to GPS-satellite signals if your mobile device’s location-feature is enabled. The app doesn’t collect any user data or information.
The author has been a professional field botanist and ecologist in Utah for over 25 years. The app is the result of regular visits and wanderings in Zion and surrounding areas over the last 15 or so years.
For more details, visit naturalistapps.com where you can download a free demo version or purchase the full app. Initially, the app is available only for Android devices. An iOS/Apple compatible version is under development.
Enjoy your visit. Zion is awesome, and 2019 should be an exceptional year for flowering plants!
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