From the dust jacket:
"Of all the places a botanist must explore, old walls are one of the most picturesque," writes editor Matthias Hermann in his introduction to Wild Flowers. "The most richly wooded areas," he goes on, "are those where the various species are comparatively small, thinly scattered and where the ground is fresh or damp rather than sandy or dry."
This book describes every imaginable species of wild flower the botanist could ever find. It includes over one hundred and fifty full-color reproductions, many of them full page, the finest collection of floral paintings ever assembled.
Flowers from both remote and populous areas of the world are here described – from the Cornflower, which grows wild in the Israeli kibbutz to the Common Snowdrop of the plains of southern France to the Cercis, which springs up each May on the slopes of the St. Gabriel Mountain in southern California.
Editor Hermann notes each detail of these flowers with painstaking accuracy and clarity. The height of the stem, the color of the bloom, and the length of life pinpoint each species. And he traces as well the etymological derivation of the flower's Latin name.
Sainfoin, for example, is also known as onobrychis. "Onos" means ass in classical Greek and "brycho" mean to bray. The Greeks considered this flower the favorite food of donkeys.
Mistletoe, the flower most closely identified with Christmas, once furnished a secret potion for the mysterious rites of the Druids. Rosemary is a maritime plant also known as seadew and there are over 500 varieties of the ordinary raspberry bramble, alternately known as rubus.
Wild flowers is not only a complete catalogue for the botanist, it is also a treasure trove of color and information for flower lovers everywhere,.
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