Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes

Like many visitors to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I enjoy spending time hiking through the woods or along a lake shore, kayaking in rivers and lakes, and biking on back roads and trails. I’ll often stop to enjoy just being in the midst of the natural beauty — and wish that I had brought my camera.

Kerry and Showy Lady's Slipper near Pyramid Point

When confronted with a new flower, my first impulse is to learn its name. . We have developed two tools to help you identify and learn about the wildflowers of Sleeping Bear Dunes. The first is a simple wildflower field guide which is available to download for FREE. You will have to download two pdf documents:
Wildflowers Front 041610
Wildflowers Back 041610.

It contains just pictures and names of the most common flowers in the area and can be easily folded up and taken with you on your hike. This is available at the Visitor Center for a $2.00 suggested donation. I hope that these tools will provide helpful references to the flowers in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to make you flower identification easier. The flowers have been categorized by color and season of bloom.

To open the database, just click on one of the links on the left. Click on the color category if you want to see a summary of flowers for each color category. If you know the flower you want to look-up, click on the link directly.

Web References

• UW-Stevens Point, Robert Freckmann Herbarium web site has a large database of wildflowers in Wisconsin.
  Most of these flowers are also found in northern Michigan. It also has a great search function which I found very helpful.
• Michigan Wildflower Index, Charles Peirce, Carson City HS Biology Project.
• Wildflower Association of Michigan web site.
• Yahoo’s Wildflower Database

Books and Field Guides

• Wildflowers of Michigan by Stan Tekiela, Adventure Publications, Inc. Cambridge, MN
• Michigan Wildflowers by Harry C. Lund, Thunder Bay Press, Holt, MI
• Wildflowers – Northeastern/North-central North America – by Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny, Houghton – Mifflin Company, Boston, MA
• The Audubon Society Pocket Guides of Familiar Flowers of North America (Eastern Region), Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Further Information

If you wish to ask a specific question or would like to contact our specialist, please email naturalist@friendsofsleepingbear.org.