In 1909, and then in the summers of 1912-1914, Margaret Armstrong travelled through the Western United States, observing the wildflowers that grew there. Margaret’s friend, Elsie Littell, described how she “would appear on a ledge with a flower in her mouth, and carefully make her way down using both hands… then, not waiting to brush the dust and burrs off her clothes, begin drawing the flower, perhaps one never correctly recorded, and making notes of the coloring.” This work culminated in the first illustrated guidebook to the wildflowers of the Western United States in 1915, organized according to Schuyler Matthews’s Field Book of American Wildflowers, which covered the Eastern states. A number of herbarium specimens collected by Armstrong on these trips and used as reference for her illustrations in “Western Wildflowers”, are held at the New York Botanical Garden’s herbarium. Artist Georgia O’Keeffe is known to have owned a copy of Armstrong’s book, and it is believed that Armstrong’s description inspired O’Keeffe’s painting, “Jimson Weed."
