The Best Ways to Identify Any Wildflower You See

Thanks to Lady Bird Johnson and the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, road-tripping in spring and summer can feel like driving through a dappled landscape painting of wildflowers in every shade. In Texas, we love our bluebonnets so much that cars often pull off the highway in spring for a quick family portrait.

Naturalist Andrea Debbink loves the sight of purple woodland flowers like wood violets, wild geraniums, and wild blue phlox, painting a purple carpet across the forest floor. Besides being visually stunning, observing wildflowers can also inspire something in the human spirit, Debbink said.

“The most interesting wildflower I've learned about is fireweed," said Debbink, author of Flower Finding: Delight in the Splendor of Wild Blooms. "It's an incredible plant that gets its name from its ability to quickly regrow after a fire. When Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980, some scientists predicted it'd be decades or longer before plant or animal life would return to the area. Instead, just two weeks after the volcano erupted, fireweed sprouted in the dust. I think there's something inspiring about a plant that can do that."

If your appreciation of wildflowers has been limited to a cute boho print or other people’s Instagram shots, consider taking a closer look at what's growing wild around you.

“I think it's important to pay attention to wildflowers in our local environments for the same reason we should pay attention to any part of nature (wildlife and other plants included): We're part of the same ecosystem,” Debbink said. “Or to think of it another way, we're a part of the same community. And wildflowers can enrich our lives with their beauty and their ecological benefits.”

Different wildflowers bloom throughout the year, but spring and summer are prime time to observe blooms.

Where to look for wildflowers

In Flower Finding, Debbink suggests watching these types of spaces for emerging wildflowers:

• Disturbed areas: If vegetation or topsoil has been disturbed by human activity or natural events, wildflowers might sprout there (like the fireweed around Mount Saint Helens).

• Roadsides: Spaces between and beside highways and small roads can become liminal spaces that native plants are allowed to grow wild.

• Seeps: Land is moist and fertile for wildflowers where groundwater and springs emerge from underground.

• Thickets: Look for dense growth of trees and shrubs close together.

Try the identification tools below to learn more about the flowers you discover.

Online identification tools

• PlantNet: Available online or as an app from the AppStore or Google Play. Upload a photo of the plant you want to identify, and AI will compare it to known plant photos. Use your observations to determine the most likely identification.

• iNaturalist: Available from AppStore or Google Play, this is the digital version of your old-school nature journal. Plus, it allows you to connect with a whole community of other naturalists who can help you identify plants and creatures.

• Discover Life: Use this site’s ID Nature Guides to identify plants, insects, vertebrates, fungi, and more. Select known characteristics of the wildflower you want to identify and see what species fit the criteria and are likely growing in your area.

• My Wildflowers and Wildflower Search: These two work very much like Discover Life. You select some features of the location where you observed the flower and the appearance of the flower, and the site will show you potential matches. You may need to try more than one site or search tool to find the best match.

Pocket wildflower guides

If apps, AI, and online search engines are not your preferred way of engaging with nature (or you don’t have a great signal out in the wilderness), you could also carry a pocket field guide in your travels.

“There are many great resources out there for people who want to learn how to identify wildflowers," Debbink said. "I use apps and websites but I always start with a paperback wildflower guide I've had for years. It's most helpful to use a field guide that's specific to your state or region.”

Try one of these field guides to North American wildflowers:

• National Geographic Pocket Guide to Wildflowers of North America

• Falcon Guides' Wildflowers of North America: A Coast-to-Coast Guide to More than 500 Flowering Plants

• National Audubon Society Wildflowers of North America (This one is only for the chonkiest pockets, weighing in at 4 pounds and 912 pages.)

You found the flowers; now what?

It might be tempting to pluck those pretty blooms and take them home for yourself—but not so fast.

 “Most of the time, it's best to err on the side of caution and not pick wildflowers or other plants. There are many places where picking plants is prohibited, such as state parks—and even when it's allowed, removing plants from their habitat can be disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem,” Debbink said. “That said, you can grow native wildflowers on your own property or even in containers, which not only can help pollinators, you can enjoy the flowers or harvest them yourself.”

If you do want to “preserve” the wildflowers you discover in the wild, think of how you can create an image of the flower.

 “I think photography is a simple and accessible way to ‘preserve’ wildflowers without disturbing them," Debbink said. "It also can help you to truly see a plant and study it. If you take your time, it can even be a mindful practice. The same is true of other visual arts like sketching or painting."

Your interest and curiosity about wildflowers where you live can be the first step in supporting their growth.

 “In my book, I tell a story about how it wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I began to learn the names of the plants that had surrounded me my whole life. It's a pretty common scenario," Debbink said. "Once you have some awareness or knowledge of the native wildflowers in your community, you can plant them or encourage places like parks or schools to incorporate them in their landscaping."

My Favorite Amazon Deal of the Day: This Ultra-wide Samsung Monitor

When I got my first large-sized computer monitor, I found it very difficult to go back to my 13-inch laptop screen. The ultra-wide Samsung ViewFinity S65TC will likely do the same. The 34-inch curved productivity monitor is currently on sale for $449.99 (originally $799.99) after a 44% discount, the lowest price I have seen after checking price-tracking tools.

Samsung ViewFinity S65TC Monitor

$449.99 at Amazon

$799.99 Save $350.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$449.99 at Amazon

$799.99 Save $350.00

Productivity monitors should not be confused with gaming monitors. Although most high-end gaming monitors are curved and wider than normal, their specs focus on different metrics. The Samsung ViewFinity S65TC came out in February and has a 1,000R curved display with 3,440 by 1,440 pixels of resolution and a 100 Hz refresh rate. You won't get the same experience on this as you would from a high-end gaming monitor, but it will work for most casual gamers.

Since this is a productivity screen, Samsung gave it a KVM switch feature, which lets you control two sources on the monitor at once with a single keyboard and mouse. You can split the screens or use picture-in-picture (or picture-by-picture) to do your work.

The ViewFinity S65TC has a Thunderbolt 4 connection, an HDMI DisplayPort, built-in speakers, and a USB3 Hub. You can also use a LAN port in case your laptop doesn't have a port for ethernet use.

Yes, You Can Have Too Much Cash

I've always held the belief that cash really is king; after all, it's important to have an easily accessible emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses. However, having excess cash beyond those six to nine months' worth of expenses can mean missing out on major returns. I've recommended before that dividing your money into multiple accounts helps you see all your saving goals separately, so they’ll be easier to track and access for different reasons. The money set aside for emergencies goes to a different account than your dream vacation fund, and so on. And when it comes to anything beyond a few months' worth of expenses, it's more about understanding the opportunity cost of holding too much in cash.

Don't miss out on compound growth

The power of compound growth is one of the most important principles in investing. When you leave money in cash, it doesn't grow at the same rate as it would if that money was invested in the stock market or other assets. Over time, this lost growth can really add up.

For example, let's say you have $50,000 set aside for a down payment on a house you plan to buy in two to three years. If you keep that money in a savings account earning 1% interest, after three years it will have grown to about $51,500. However, if you had invested that $50,000 in a stock index fund that returned an average of 7% per year, it would have grown to over $56,000—a difference of nearly $5,000. That's a significant amount of potential growth that you'd be missing out on.

Even if you don't invest your money, you'll still be missing out on growth if you only set aside your money in cash. Think about it like this: If you deposit $500 into a run-of-the-mill savings account, you’ve earn $0.50 in interest in one year. With a high-yield account with 2% APY, you will earn $10 on that $500—and with more time and more money, that interest adds up.

The key is to think about your time horizon. If you have money that you know you'll need in the next two to three years, like for a down payment, a car purchase, or another major expense, it makes sense to keep that in a relatively stable, low-risk cash account. On that front: Here’s our guide to choosing a high-yield savings account.

When to choose investing versus savings

Prioritize low-risk cash accounts for saving money you may need to tap into any time in the next five years. Maybe you’ve set your sights on a vacation or down payment on a house, or perhaps you need to pad out your emergency fund.

For longer-term savings and investments, you're usually better off putting that money to work in the market, where it can compound and grow over time. So while savings accounts are the choice for a short-term vehicle, you can turn to investing to meet your long-term goals, like stocking money away for retirement or to pay for your kids’ college.

The bottom line

I get it—when you're focusing on your day-to-day finances, it's all too easy to let your investments or savings goals take a back seat. However, the ideal approach is to have a solid emergency fund in cash, but then invest any additional cash beyond that. This allows you to earn higher returns while still maintaining sufficient liquidity. It just takes some planning to determine how much cash you truly need versus how much you can afford to invest for the long haul.

Six Cheap (Or Free) Ways to Increase Your Home's Home Value

Owning a home is an investment, and a pretty good one over time. Although owning a house will never give you a better return on other investments like putting your money into the stock market, the combination of building equity in a large asset that reliably appreciates and not pouring money into the black hole known as “rent” is pretty potent.

That’s reason enough to want to boost your home’s value as much as possible—every extra dollar your home is worth is equity you magically own. Most of the techniques that increase home value require up-front investment, however. A new kitchen or the addition of a bedroom will make your house more valuable, but you have to come up with the money for them first.

But there are ways to nudge your home value up that don’t require much money—or any money at all.

Clean and declutter

Cleaning is basically free, and you can’t underestimate how much more valuable a home appears when it’s neat and tidy. Not only will a deep clean of your home—inside and out—make it look newer and make it easier for potential buyers to see themselves living there, a dirty, grungy house looks like an expensive project even if there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, a deep-cleaning of your house can add more than $3,700 to the sale price. And decluttering—putting away all the junk you’ve accumulated and giving your home a clean, organized feel—can add more than $6,500.

Repairing minor problems throughout the home is also essential. If you’ve been ignoring small things—sticky doors, loose hinges, non-functioning light switches, dents in the drywall—potential buyers or appraisers will see those as signs of bigger problems, and value your home accordingly. After all, if you can’t be bothered to fix a broken kitchen cabinet door, why would anyone assume you’ve kept your roof or furnace in good repair?

You should also take an objective look at the caulk around your windows and in your bathroom and kitchen, the grout between your tiles, and the condition of your carpets and floors. Re-caulking is super cheap and totally DIY, cleaning grout is pretty much a sweat equity transaction, and cleaning your hardwood floors with a product that shines them up will make your home seem newer—and newer homes get higher bids.

Paint

Paint is always celebrated as the cheapest home renovation around. A fresh coat of paint inside can boost your home value by $5,000, and painting the exterior of your home can add more than $7,500 to your home’s value. If you DIY the job your costs will be in the hundreds of dollars, making this one of the most cost-effective ways to boost your home’s value.

Light

The light situation in your house—both in terms of natural sunlight and the artificial light inside—has a dramatic effect on your home’s value. Studies have shown that the more direct sunlight a house receives, the more the house is worth. And letting more of that light in—and augmenting it with plenty of interior light sources—can make your home feel larger, cleaner, and more livable, all of which translate into a higher value. Refreshing your light fixtures and adding window treatments that maximize natural light is an effective strategy but can cost you a few bucks. But simply making sure that your window treatments are clean and functional and all your light fixtures work and have fresh bulbs of the appropriate temperature and brightness will have an impact.

Refreshed hardware

People notice details. If they walk into a house and there are numerous missing, dirty, or broken drawer pulls, door handles, or wall plates, they will probably start mentally deducting from the price they’d be willing to pay for your home. Replacing or repairing these items is pretty easy and cheap, and makes a world of difference (plus it will make your home more pleasant for you while you’re still living there).

And while you’re at it, why not change your shower head to something spa-level for less than $100, and consider replacing your old, grungy faucets with sparkling new ones. Those changes aren’t free, but they won’t break the bank, either, and you can DIY these projects pretty easily.

Simple landscaping

Landscaping and curb appeal can have a huge impact on your home’s value, increasing it by as much as 20%. That’s professional landscaping, of course, which costs a fair bit of money. But if your yard, patio, or deck is a disaster it’s probably affecting your home’s value negatively—and even a bare-bones outdoor area will help your home’s value if it communicates that it’s been well-maintained.

Your first step is to just clean things up: A power wash, trash disposal, and sweep-up will make a huge difference. Giving your front door a bright color and adding some cheap solar lights can make your home feel more inviting for next to nothing. Mowing grass and trimming hedges, trees, or other vegetation so it looks like something you did on purpose instead of a losing battle against nature is also a 100% free landscaping step that will boost your home’s value.

If you have the space, you can also construct a deck from wood pallets, which you can usually find for free at construction sites, big-box hardware stores, or almost any other business that uses a loading dock. People also often advertise free pallets on Craigslist, Facebook, and other platforms to save themselves the trouble of dealing with them. This deck won’t last decades, but it can make your backyard seem like a cozy and put-together space instead of an alien landscape where joy goes to die.

Flex rooms

One final way to jolt your home’s value is to reconsider how you’re using the space. Rooms that serve more than one purpose, sometimes called “flex rooms,” offer options to people. If a potential buyer wants a home office, a flex room can be that—but if they want a spare bedroom, it can be that, too. Flex rooms boost home value as a result. So if you have a guest bedroom, consider moving the layout around and adding a desk so it could double as a home office, or a game room. Suddenly your home offers a home office space without spending a dime on an addition, and be worth more.

This Slim Profile 64GB Flash Drive Is on Sale for $12 Right Now

You can get this Slim Profile 64GB Flash Drive on sale for $14.99 right now (reg. $19). It's an easy, cheap option to store files on the move, weighs six grams, and is USB 2.0-compatible and able to work with PCs, Macs, and a wide range of MP3 music players, if you still happen to have one of those. It also comes with a keychain, but it can be removed if you don't plan to carry it around all the time.

You can get this Slim Profile 64GB Flash Drive on sale for $14.99 right now (reg. $19), though prices may change at any time.

How to Turn WhatsApp Into a Digital Journal You’ll Actually Use

The problem with digital journaling isn't that there aren't enough choices—the problem is that there are too many. As different journaling methods (like bullet journaling, gratitude journaling, etc.) have gained popularity, they've spawned their own subset of journaling apps—including a recent one from Apple itself—leading the whole space to feel bloated and crowded.

Feature bloat (do I really need all these charts and tracking tools?), choice paralysis, plus the potential privacy concerns about spilling your guts to a potentially unsecured app, and you've got a perfect recipe for... well, not actually getting any journaling done. To get back to the basics, I'm running an experiment by using WhatsApp as my personal journal—an idea I saw from Lifehacker's own Jake Peterson—and it's working out pretty well.

Of course, if you already have a journaling app or method that works for you, more power to you. But if you, like me, found that you weren't actually using those specialized journaling apps, repurposing an app you're already using might work far better.

Making the most of your WhatsApp journal

WhatsApp is a great choice for a back-to-basics journaling experiment because it's a pretty ubiquitous app that I'm already using every day. Plus, it's cross-platform, so I can access it from any of my devices, and the end-to-end encryption ensures the privacy of my entries. But it's not actually designed to be a digital diary, so I had to do a little setup to make it work like one.

Create a single-person group message

To make your own WhatsApp journal, tap the New Chat (+) icon. Your name will appear at the top of the list of contacts. Select your name and message yourself just like you would any other contact.

Credit: Screenshot by Saikat Basu

Open New Chat. Select New Group and select at least one contact from the Add Members list to create a group. Ideally, pick a friend or family member. You'll remove them later. (Maybe give them a heads up that you're doing this.)

Next, name the group (in this case, it can be something like "My Journal"). To finish the set-up, tap the Group title, then select the contact you wish to delete. Click on Remove, and the contact will be removed from the group.

Credit: Screenshot by Saikat Basu

And that's it: You now have your own encrypted, cross-platform chat window that only you can read. It's a great way to log your thoughts, keep track of your daily activities, or just send useful links and images to yourself that you'll need later.

Tips for using WhatsApp as a journal

As I've been using WhatsApp for my journal entries, I've collected a few tips that have helped make it more useful and secure.

1. Pin your journal at the top. WhatsApp allows three contacts to be pinned above the others.

2. Lock your chat/journal and add a layer of privacy.

3. Add photos to your entires. You can snap a photo and share it in your WhatsApp journal. Add a note below it for posterity.

4. Pin the really important messages in the chat. You can keep them pinned for a maximum of 30 days.

5. On Android, you can add the group to the home screen with the Add shortcut option in the group settings.

6. If you're having trouble finding a note you left yourself, remember that WhatsApp chats are searchable. You can also filter them by date via the WhatsApp calendar.

7. Use the microphone to turn WhatsApp into a voice journal or take a video and send it to yourself in the chat.

8. Use the keyboard to add symbols or use emojis as markers if you are into bullet journaling. WhatsApp's support for simple formatting like italics, bold, strikethroughs, monospace, bulleted and numbered lists, quotes, and inline code should be enough for your needs.

9. Add a Location to a WhatsApp message and use it to record a travel journal.

10. You can also add a few close friends to a separate group and create a virtual journal club when you are collaborating on something or planning a trip.

IPS Is Like GPS’ More Accurate, Indoor Cousin

Even if most people don’t understand how GPS works, we rely on it constantly and have an appreciation for the role it plays in our lives. Global positioning makes mapping and direction programs like Google Maps work, it ensures deliveries get to us in a timely way, and is used in almost any technology that currently uses tracking, timing, positioning, or navigation. A lesser-known, similar technology that uses more localized reference points, called indoor positioning systems (IPS), is helping map the inside of spaces, too. 

How are GPS and IPS different?

There’s a reason people talk about GPS when referencing IPS, so it helps to start with understanding of how GPS works. Many countries have satellites that orbit the earth specifically for the purpose of GPS. These satellites send and receive signals from objects on Earth and at a very basic level, track the time and distance of that object between the satellites. In doing so, they create a map of objects and their relative location and distance from one another, and how long it takes them to move. 

GPS is hard to use inside of spaces because signals may be weaker due to interference from buildings. Also, as accurate as GPS is, it has an accuracy of 7 meters (22 feet). 22 feet of space might not matter much in terms of the accuracy of your DoorDash delivery, but it can matter a lot when it comes to finding a product in an aisle of Ikea or the right room in a hospital. Since people need help navigating indoors as well as outside, a more accurate system is helpful. That's where IPS comes in.

In a similar way to GPS, IPS uses smartphones and other smart devices as the tracked objects in question, and then uses bluetooth, wifi, and any other possible indoor signal to measure the time and distance of the smart device from points in a space. The more points it can track, the more accurate the IPS can be.

It's also possible to tag people or objects with wearable tracking devices, like NFC or RFID tags, to make it easier to find someone or something. Imagine entering a confusing space, like a hospital, and being given a visitor badge with an NFC tag embedded. An app tracking the location of the NFC tag could direct you to the exact room you're looking for, showing your location in real time as you navigate the hallways.

IPS is already in use in places you've been

Though you may not have heard of IPS, it's already likely already been in use at places you've visited. At theme parks, for example: Disney is already using IPS technology in its parks, as is Ferrari World. And the hospital example above wasn't just an example: healthcare facilities like National Taiwan University Hospital already have IPS in place throughout the world, not just to help patients find spaces, but to track patients themselves, including infants. Malls like Canary Wharf in London are another example. Airports, convention centers, zoos, large offices, and even underground transportation hubs like subways can and already are using IPS. 

While it's possible to use IPS to observe the traffic patterns of people going through an airport in real time, the accuracy that IPS offers can also help plan for better flow of human traffic in the future. If the data shows people clustering in one space in a store but no products being purchased from that area, for example, managers can investigate what the problem might be and correct it. The data can help users navigate, but it can also be a powerful tool for the businesses managing the spaces themselves.