Product Description

For seventy years, The Natural Gardens of North Carolina has been a must-read volume for anyone interested in wildflowers, native plants, ecology, or conservation in the state. This handsome revised edition features new line drawings and color photographs, an appendix that updates the botanical nomenclature, an introduction that focuses on B. W. Wells and his passion for the state's landscape, and an afterword that discusses the continuing relevance of Wells's ideas.

One of the first scientists to write and lecture about ecology, Wells introduced North Carolinians to the extraordinary tapestry of "natural gardens," or plant communities, within the state's borders back in 1932. His purpose was to help readers understand a plant within its community--a pioneering concept at the time--and to promote conservation. Moving from the Atlantic coast westward, Wells identifies eleven major natural gardens: the sand dune community, salt marsh, freshwater marsh, swamp forest, aquatic vegetation, evergreen shrub bog (or pocosin), grass-sedge bog (or savanna), sandhill, old-field community, upland forest, and high mountain spruce-fir forest. He devotes the first part of his book to a general account of the vegetation and habitats of each community and then identifies and describes the wildflowers that are found there.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1310027 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Released on: 2009-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"If you want to appreciate the plants of North Carolina, you need to become acquainted with B.W. Wells' Natural Gardens."
— The Carrboro Citizen

A real contribution to botanical literature. (Nature)

"It is seldom that scientific exactness and charm of description go hand in hand, but Professor Wells has combined these happily. (Asheville Citizen)"

About the Author
The late B. W. Wells (1884-1978) was professor and chair of the Department of Botany at North Carolina State College in Raleigh from 1919 to 1949. He was a pioneer in the field of ecology and an ardent conservationist.