This full-color guide to the plants that define the PCT is a must-have for every hike.

The Pacific Crest Trail is one of America's most iconic hiking trails, traversed by millions of day and section hikers every year. This new guide, The Plants of the Pacific Crest Trail: A Hiker’s Guide to Southern California, helps readers hikers find and identify the plants growing along the trail—the majestic conifers, deciduous trees and shrubs with shady canopies, vibrant wildflowers, and ferns, horsetails, and grasses. The guide starts with an overview of plant communities and habitats and includes a section overview that highlights what is likely to be found along the trail. The species descriptions detail information about height and bloom season and include fun anecdotes and memorable factoids about many of the plants. The Plants of the Pacific Crest Trail will help hikers of all ages and abilities truly engage with nature, making every experience on the PCT more memorable.

Dana York received his M.S. in botany from California State University, Fresno, and his B.S. in forest/natural resource management from Cal Poly Humboldt. For over 30 years, he has worked on floristic and special-status plant species surveys throughout California and Oregon, on both public and private lands, discovering new plant species in the Oregon Cascade, Klamath, and Sierra Nevada ranges. He teaches botany workshops on the Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada, and Klamath Mountains. Dana lives with his family in Arcata, California. Follow him on Instagram @pct_botanist.

James M. André, a lifelong Californian, began hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the late 1970s. While completing his undergraduate and graduate work in plant ecology, taxonomy, conservation botany, and rare plant population biology at UCLA, CSU Humboldt State, and UC Davis, Jim was employed as the Forest Botanist at Inyo National Forest, and since 1994 he has served as Director of the University of California’s Granite Mountains Desert Research Center. He also enjoys backpacking, cycling, baseball, beerology, storm-chasing, writing, theater, woodworking, and most of all, hanging out with his family.