Product Description

Jack Sanders's colorful tribute to wildflowers is bursting with odd facts, ingenious uses, and bizarre superstition about some of North America's most beautiful and common plants. There are more than 10,000 varieties of wildflowers in North America, some rare, some so plentiful that they are designated as invasive weeds. Each has a unique story.
There's Bouncing Bet, a perennial common along the roads and railroad tracks of America. Like many of our most abundant summer wildflowers, Bet was brought over to fill colonial gardens. It's a beautiful plant, but also a useful one. Open up the stalk and its sap makes a fine soap. Colonial beermakers used to put a dab in to help the head on a brew. Doctors used it to wash wounds. Generally considered a weed, it's everywhere.
Or Coltsfoot, which pops up almost alone in winters, and was used in New England as a cure for coughs, the leaves boiled down in water. Asthmatics, Sanders tells us, used to smoke it for relief. For many years, apothecaries in France used Coltsfoot as its symbol, a surprising pedigree for a neglected "weed."
More a companion than a field guide, THE SECRETS OF WILDFLOWERS is a must-have for anyone who enjoys a walk in a meadow or a gaze outside.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374321 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781585746682
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"This book should be in the library of every wildflower lover."
--Mary Beth Wiesner, American Horticulturist

"It's important to credit the designer, Casey Shain. This is the handsomest book on wildflowers I've ever had the pleasure of holding in my hands."--Ridgefield (CT) Press
-- Review

Review

From the Back Cover
Few things in nature beautify the world more than wildflowers. Their countless colors and endless designs are found almost anywhere the sun strikes the earth - from fields to woods, deserts to ponds, and even in junkyards, dumps, and cracks in shopping-center parking lots.
The Secrets of Wildflowers, Jack Sanders's colorful tribute, is bursting with odd facts and wonderful superstitions about some of North America's most beautiful and common plants. And this is just one of its many uses. You'll also find natural history, folklore, habitats, horticulture, ingenious uses past and present, origins of names, and even their literary pedigrees. Far richer and eminently more varied than any filed guide, The Secrets of Wildflowers is one banquet no nature aficionado can pass up.
How they work and what they do are often overlooked, and how they have been used has largely been forgotten. The Secrets of Wildflowers provides a thorough introduction to more than one hundred representative species of North American wildflowers.

Customer Reviews

The best in the field!
There has never been a handsomer, more erudite, more pleasurable wildflower book to read than this one. Sanders has done a magnificent job of pulling together information from an array of sources---up-to-date science, folklore, descriptive natural history, medicinal uses, and more. Botanical manuals and field guides are vital for identifying North American wildflowers. This book is vital to learn the stories behind the species. It's beautiful to page through and a delight to read. I recommend it most highly!

Wildflower Wonders
"The Secrets of Wildflowers" by Sanders is phenomenal! I am a naturalist in training and this book has helped me tremendously to find interesting facts to share. I wish there were more out there like this one, but I have just not found them. "The Secrets of Wildflowers" talks about a lot of plants native to North America, which is why it is so special. I can't thank Jack Sanders enough for making my homework a thousand times easier.

Little Gem of a Book
This is simply a wonderful addition to any library. I was looking for a native wildflower handbook with a little extra, but this surpassed my expectations. You don't need to be a botanist or a naturalist to enjoy this offering. It has tidbits of fascinating information about native U.S. wildflowers, from its history to medicinal uses to mythological lore. The layout is nice and there are many additional artistic touches here and there to make it a pleasure to read.

I guarantee you'll never look at a wildflower the same way after reading this little gem.