Revised and expanded edition of this essential guide with full keys to more than 1600 wild plants found in Britain and Ireland.
This expanded edition is packed with extra identification tips, innovative features designed to assist beginners and many more illustrations. The text aims to be as useful as possible for those working in conservation by, for example, marking plants as protected or as 'Red List' endangered species, and including a compilation of the latest research on ancient woodland indicator plants. The text also includes the most up-to-date keys for certain plant groups, written especially for this book.
Original author Dr Francis Rose, MBE Dr Rose is one of our best-known botanists, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lichen and bryophyte flora as well as of flowering plants, and of plant ecology and biogeography. His career as a botanist began at the age of six, learning to identify plants on country walks and after graduating in botany from London University, he spent most of his working life teaching there until retirement in 1981. This remains his most popular book, which took over 20 years to write and represents a lifetime's experience of plant identification. Author of revised and expanded second edition Clare O'Reilly Clare O'Reilly (previously Coleman) is a freelance botanist and writer who left her career as an environmental lawyer in order to revise this book. She recently gained an MSc in Plant Taxonomy but was a self-taught amateur botanist for many years. Her passion for plants began after winning a wild flower-in-a-vase competition, aged seven. Clare teaches beginners courses on plant identification and this experience, coupled with Dr Rose's expertise in the original text, enables this revised edition to be even more useful for those new to field botany.
Customer Reviews:
Best flower guide there is
by RFJ in United Kingdom
This is quite simply the best guide to wild flowers in Britain that has yet been published. The original edition was fantastic and this is just as good. The keys are excellent, as are the species descriptions and drawings.
Praise for the first edition:
"This book stands out from the crowd of popular wild flower guides: there is nothing else quite like it"
– Dennis Vickers
"[...] a masterpiece of clarity and conciseness, homing in on diagnostic floral and vegetative detail gleaned from years out in the field. For Francis Rose's exceptional range of ecological knowledge grants him special insights from which we can all absorb new information and stimulating ideas."
– Plant Talk