When I visited southern Portugal in December a few years ago, my guide assured me that if I returned in the spring, I would find the fields full of wildflowers…and that promise figured largely in my plans for our April trip this year. I was not disappointed. The Portuguese practice a form of agriculture which includes a rotation of crops, grazing, and fallow fields…and the fallow fields, not to mention roadsides, hillsides, orchards, cork groves, hedgerows, and riversides, are indeed full of wildflowers in the spring. I photographed well over 70 species. I have only begun to identify them (and may have already mis-identified some). Here is first small sample. The English name is on each photo, but you will probably have to view the photos full screen to read it. Some of the most interesting wildflowers I found are proving the most elusive to identify. The situation for wildflowers seems to the same as the situation for birds in Portugal. The only resources I could find were English language, published in England, by Englishmen (and women). It would certainly be possible to spend as much time in the Alentejo and Algarve studying the wildflowers as you could spend on the birds…which is to say a lot of time! All photos taken with the Sony RX10iv and processed in Polarr.