Identification guides for plants or animals

[gabester]

I seem to remember when I was a kid seeing books for identifying plants and animals that would start out asking some simple questions to help identify an unknown plant or animal...

Are the leaves round or pointed?
Are the leaves narrow or wide?
Are the leave stems curled under or attached flat?

Does anything like this exist on the web today? Where would I find any such books in the library today?

[CJsNvrUrly]

My husband had a book like that; I'm sure of it. I don't remember what it was, though. Sorry.

[MarkD]

There are field guides (what you carry in the field and such apps as whatbird.com and leafsnap that cam be used as iOS) and then identification guides as an office or other reference. Obviously guides to birds come to mind very quickly. Looking at the web, try enature.com.

Great places to find such books:
1. call a large library such as a public library or a college library and ask for the science reference help or even the general reference desk of a fairly large public or school library should be able to find the book(s), particularly if you have specific areas such as plants in the south or mammals of north america, etc. The DDC would be the 570s to 590s. An example of the kind of help that could be found would be on the John Hopkins library page: http://guides.library.jhu.edu/biology

2. some states have employees to answer all kinds of questions about iding plants and animals and helping with enviromental issues. (In Texas, they are the county agricultural extension offices tied to the Texas A&M system). They have id'd plants for me before.

Hope this helps.

[Thrift Store Scott]

Audubon field guides are a good, basic resource-

http://www.audubonguides.com/index.html

They're available for trees, birds, wildflowers, and insects among other things.

[Mike Johnson]

What you're looking for is called a dichotomous key.

[testcase]

I'm SURE there'e an App for that but, I'll let you do the searching.

[Thrift Store Scott]

testcase wrote:
I'm SURE there'e an App for that but, I'll let you do the searching.

I'm guessing you didn't follow the link I posted. It leads to the SmartPhone versions of the Audubon guides.

[Lew Zealand]

I've used The Jepson Desert Manual but that's a regional manual only. The step by step ID does work, though!

[btfc]

Here's a good one for plants:

http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/idit.htm