It has never been more urgent to identify the potential impacts of climate change. In our quest for information, we often rely on records that reveal how organisms and systems responded to past climates. A new study by Miller-Rushing et al. uses some unorthodox archive material (photographs and herbarium specimens) to examine changes in flowering phenology in the USA. Their approach suggests that we have failed to think-outside-the-box and have been overlooking a valuable resource for climate-impact research.