Walk into any nursery, florist, or supermarket, and you’ll encounter displays of dozens of gorgeous flowers, from chrysanthemums to orchids. At one time these fanciful blooms were the rare trophies of the rich and influential—even the carnation, today thought of as one of the humblest cut flowers. Every blossom we take for granted now is the product of painstaking and imaginative planning, breeding, horticultural ingenuity, and sometimes chance. The personalities of the breeders, from an Indiana farmer to Admiral Lord Gambier’s gardener, were as various and compelling as the beauty they conjured from skilled hybridization.

In Visions of Loveliness: Great Flower Breeders of the Past, Judith Taylor wrote engagingly about the vivid history and characters behind eighteen types of popular flowers. In this companion volume she uncovers information about another eight familiar flowers: poinsettias, chrysanthemums, gladioli, pansies, carnations, water lilies, clematis, and penstemons.

Taylor has tapped into an enormous trove of stories about extraordinary people with vision and skill who added to our enjoyment piece by piece, starting about 150 years ago. This beautifully illustrated book will please flower enthusiasts, gardeners, and history buffs alike.

A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.

“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly successful because he understood better than his rivals how to engage customers’ emotions. He sold the love of flowers along with the flower seeds.

Vick was genuinely passionate about floriculture, but he also pioneered what we now describe as integrated marketing. He spent a mind-boggling $100,000 per year on advertising (mostly to women, his target demographic); he courted newspaper editors for free publicity; his educational guides presaged today’s content marketing; he recruited social influencers to popularize neighborhood gardening clubs; and he developed a visually rich communication and branding strategy to build customer loyalty and inflect their purchasing needs with purchasing desire.

One in every seven flowering plants on earth is an orchid. Yet orchids retain an air of exotic mystery—and they remain remarkably misunderstood and underappreciated. The orchid family contains an astonishing array of colors, forms, and smells that captivate growers from all walks of life across the globe. Though undeniably elegant, the popular moth orchid—a grocery store standard—is a bland stand-in when compared with its thousands of more complex and fascinating brethren, such as the Demon Queller, which grows in dark forests where its lovely blooms are believed to chase evil forces away. There is the Fetid Sun-God, an orchid that lures female flies to lay their eggs on its flowers by emitting a scent of rancid cheese. Or the rare, delicate Lizard Orchid, which mimics the appearance of lizards but smells distinctly of goat.
 
The Book of Orchids revels in the diversity and oddity of these beguiling plants. Six hundred of the world’s most intriguing orchids are displayed, along with life-size photographs that capture botanical detail, as well as information about distribution, peak flowering period, and each species’ unique attributes, both natural and cultural. With over 28,000 known species—and more being discovered each year—the orchid family is arguably the largest and most geographically widespread of the flowering plant families. Including the most up-to-date science and accessibly written by botanists Mark Chase, Maarten Christenhusz, and Tom Mirenda, each entry in The Book of Orchids will entice researchers and orchid enthusiasts alike.
 
With stunning full-color images, The Book of Orchids is sure to become the go-to reference for these complex, alluring, and extraordinarily adaptable plants.
 

Christmas Trees for Pleasure and Profit is for anyone who enjoys being and working outdoors and is seeking a profitable hobby or small business venture. Robert Wray has updated this fourth edition to include the latest techniques and tools for harvesting trees, new methods of transport, the most recent data on herbicides, and advice on how to run a Christmas-tree business today.

A perennial bestseller, this illustrated guide covers selecting land, choosing species, planting, harvesting, and managing a plantation. Wray provides guidance for choosing species suitable for the grower's situation, where and how to get planting stock, and how to care for it. The planting process is described in detail, including both hand and machine methods. The book presents useful techniques for protecting the growing trees from weeds, animals, fire, insects, and disease, and offers a full description of shearing or shaping trees to improve their form and densityùkeys to a successful crop.

As the grower's job is not done until the trees are sold, issues of grading, harvesting, advertising, and marketing are examined. A chapter on finances deals with costs, profits, and taxes. From novice to experienced grower, there is something in this book for everyone.

The Western Mediterranean is home to more than 10,000 plant species, which makes it one of the most important regions in the world for biodiversity. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to Western Mediterranean wildflowers, covering southern Europe from the Portuguese Algarve to Italy, and Morocco to Tunisia in North Africa, along with all the islands in between. It features 2,500 plants, and its more than 800 line drawings and color photographs make it the ideal companion for field identification.
 

First published in 1958, this compendium on the history of flowers has lost almost none of its bloom. With a flair for research and citation, E. Buckner Hollingsworth draws on folklore, poetry, annals of medicine, and gardening manuals to report essential historical information on the domestication of garden favorites before they were grown as ornamental plants. Organized by species, Flower Chronicles brims with literary and historical references, anecdotes, and digressions on the lives of merchants, housewives, perfumers, and surgeons. Though she writes with a light touch, Hollingsworth tackles Greek literature, Shakespeare, De Quincey, and Herrick.

A tremendously entertaining and charming book, not only for its richness of information but because Hollingsworth clearly enjoys her material, Flower Chronicles has an antiquarian feel about it-with line drawings, woodcuts, and translations from the Greek—but the text never feels dated. Out of print for nearly thirty years, Flower Chronicles reemerges as a garden literature classic.

"With humor and literary taste, Mrs. Hollingworth has compiled an astonishing amount of scholarly yet entertaining material from her studies in archaeology and mythology and her researches in ancient pharmacopeias, botanies, cookbooks, herbals, and stillroom books."-New Yorker

"Mrs. Hollingsworth writes gaily and quotes from old books, with a wonderful taste for the curious English of Elizabethan gardeners, and sharp notice of what poets and translators of talent have set down. To this she has added the excitement of discovery of forms not noticed by her predecessors."-New York Herald Tribune Book Review

Native orchids are increasingly threatened by pressure from population growth and development but, nonetheless, still present a welcome surprise to observant hikers in every state and province. Compiled and illustrated by long-time orchid specialist Paul Martin Brown, these pocket guides to grass-pinks and their companions form part of a series that will cover all the wild orchids of the continental United States and Canada.
      Brown provides general distributional information, time of flowering, and habitat requirements for each species as well as a complete list of hybrids and the many different growth and color forms that can make identifying orchids so intriguing. For the grass-pinks and companions he includes information on 16 species, 2 additional varieties, and 7 hybrids.
      Grass-pinks, with their showy pink to white flowers, are some of the most conspicuous wild orchids encountered in the prairies, bogs, and open wetlands of eastern North America. Most of these species are easy to identify based upon their general appearance, range, and time of flowering. Answering three simple questions—when, where, and how does it grow?—and comparing the living plant with the striking photos in the backpack-friendly laminated guide should enable both professional and amateur naturalists to achieve the satisfaction of identifying a specific orchid.

Once upon a time—before the 1860s—people loved old roses like "Pearl of Gold," "Marchionesse of Lorne," or "Autumn Damask." Then along came the hybrid tea roses, which were easier to arrange, more dramatic, and longer-blooming, and the old roses were all but forgotten. Now the lovely, subtle-hued, richly perfumed old roses are making a comeback, thanks to the efforts of a stubborn band of eccentric characters who rescued them from back alleys, ramshackle cottages, and overgrown graveyards across the country. Thomas Christopher tells us the fascinating stories of the old roses—how they were created and made their way to America—and the unforgettable people who "rustle" them from abandoned lots and secret gardens today, revelling in the mystery of an "unknown yellow."

Trees not only add beauty and value to property but also enhance the physical environment by providing shade, reflecting heat, and blocking wind. Choosing the right trees for the right location and conditions, however, is not always easy: each species has its own requirements for sunlight, water, drainage, and protection.

Landscaping with Trees in the Midwest: A Guide for Residential and Commercial Properties describes sixty-five desirable tree species, their characteristics, and their uses. More than 325 color photographs illustrate the appearance of each species through the seasons—including height, shape, bark, flowers, and fall colors—as well as other factors that influence selection and siting in order to help the landscape professional or homeowner make informed choices.

This guidebook also considers trees as a factor in overall environmental health and gives special consideration to the effects of the emerald ash borer, which continues to wreak havoc in wooded areas of the Midwest, offering replacement alternatives for vulnerable areas. In addition to the text and photos, the book includes a table of growth rates and sizes, a map of hardiness zones, and other valuable reference tools.

“A beautifully written book.”—The Garden Journal

“A few garden writers offer prose that goes beyond how to spade and spray to convey the experience and pleasures of gardening. The late Elizabeth Lawrence was such a writer.”—Southern Living

“First published in 1957 and out-of-print for many years, this is a delightfully written and enormously informative introduction to the fascinating variety of little bulbs available to the gardener. The author discusses a wide variety of plants, both familiar and little-known, including crocuses, species daffodils, hardy cyclamen and lily-family members such as Brodiaea, Bessera, and Calochortus.”—American Horticulturist

Something is blooming every day of the year in the renowned gardens at Montrose, Nancy Goodwin’s nineteenth-century property in historic Hillsborough, North Carolina. Since moving to Montrose with her husband Craufurd in 1977, Goodwin has transformed more than twenty acres into an extraordinary complex of interlocking gardens that come in and out of focus as the seasons overlap and change.

Beautifully written and illustrated, Montrose: Life in a Garden is Goodwin’s affectionate biography of her gardens, recounting how and why each section was developed over the years, including the Dianthus Walk, Nandinaland, Hellebore Slope, Mother-in-Law Walk, Snowdrop Woods, and Jo’s Bed. It is also a meticulous month-by-month chronicle of a specific year in these gardens—a year that saw a punishing drought that threatened Goodwin’s no-irrigation policy, a damaging December ice storm, and the beginnings of a plan to preserve Montrose in the future.

Working on her knees for long days throughout the year, Nancy Goodwin always has a vision of how her gardens will appear in twelve months or in twelve years. She will spend weeks, for instance, planting hundreds of snow drops along a woodsy path in order to enjoy a fleeting week of exquisite beauty in coming years. She never puts anything into the ground without imagining what form, color, and texture it will add to a bed. With tireless patience and unflagging optimism, Goodwin will wait years to see a single plant bloom.

Following Goodwin’s activities throughout the year, readers will learn the fundamentals of maintaining a four-season garden in Zone 7 in the South. Award-winning garden illustrator Ippy Patterson has provided more than 160 lavish illustrations of the gardens at Montrose and these meticulously detailed drawings appear throughout the book.

At once delicate, exotic, and elegant, orchids are beloved for their singular, instantly recognizable beauty. Found in nearly every climate, the many species of orchid have carried symbolic weight in countless cultures over time. The ancient Greeks associated them with fertility and thought that parents who ingested orchid root tubers could control the sex of their child. During the Victorian era, orchids became deeply associated with romance and seduction. And in twentieth-century hard-boiled detective stories, they transformed into symbols of decadence, secrecy, and cunning. What is it about the orchid that has enthralled the imagination for so many centuries? And why do they still provoke so much wonder?
 
Following the stories of orchids throughout history, Jim Endersby divides our attraction to them into four key themes: science, empire, sex, and death. When it comes to empire, for instance, orchids are a prime example of the exotic riches sought by Europeans as they shaped their plans for colonization. He also reveals how Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution became intimately entangled with the story of the orchid as he investigated their methods of cross-pollination. As he shows, orchids—perhaps because of their extraordinarily diverse colors, shapes, and sizes—have also bloomed repeatedly in films, novels, plays, and poems, from Shakespeare to science fiction, from thrillers to elaborate modernist novels.
 
Featuring many gorgeous illustrations from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Orchid: A Cultural History tells, for the first time, the extraordinary story of orchids and our prolific interest in them. It is an enchanting tale not only for gardeners and plant collectors, but anyone curious about the flower’s obsessive hold on the imagination in history, cinema, literature, and more.

Written in a manner suitable for a popular audience and including color photographs and recipes for some common uses of the nut, Pecan: America’s Native Nut Tree gathers scientific, historical, and anecdotal information to present a comprehensive view of the largely unknown story of the pecan.

From the first written record of it made by the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca in 1528 to its nineteenth-century domestication and its current development into a multimillion dollar crop, the pecan tree has been broadly appreciated for its nutritious nuts and its beautiful wood. In Pecan: America’s Native Nut Tree, Lenny Wells explores the rich and fascinating story of one of North America’s few native crops, long an iconic staple of southern foods and landscapes.
 
Fueled largely by a booming international interest in the pecan, new discoveries about the remarkable health benefits of the nut, and a renewed enthusiasm for the crop in the United States, the pecan is currently experiencing a renaissance with the revitalization of America’s pecan industry. The crop’s transformation into a vital component of the US agricultural economy has taken many surprising and serendipitous twists along the way. Following the ravages of cotton farming, the pecan tree and its orchard ecosystem helped to heal the rural southern landscape. Today, pecan production offers a unique form of agriculture that can enhance biodiversity and protect the soil in a sustainable and productive manner.
 
Among the many colorful anecdotes that make the book fascinating reading are the story of André Pénicaut’s introduction of the pecan to Europe, the development of a Latin name based on historical descriptions of the same plant over time, the use of explosives in planting orchard trees, the accidental discovery of zinc as an important micronutrient, and the birth of “kudzu clubs” in the 1940s promoting the weed as a cover crop in pecan orchards.

**Published in cooperation with the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ellis Brothers Pecan, Inc., and The Mason Pecans Group**

From the wings of moths to the feet of hoverflies and the head feathers of nectar-seeking birds, the process of pollination is a natural marvel. How do the many annuals and perennials and shrubs and trees that populate the globe manage to lure the aid of bees and butterflies and other creatures at exactly the appropriate time? Pollination Power offers a unique, truly bird’s-eye view of the wonders of pollination at work.

In stunning full-color images, employing the latest photographic techniques, esteemed photographer Heather Angel has captures the intimate interactions of plants with their floral pollinators. The plants come not only from Angel’s Surrey backyard and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, but from twenty countries where Angel has travelled—from the rich floral kingdoms of the Cape of South Africa to the diversity of China and the Americas. The photos illustrate the varied techniques that flowers use to communicate with their pollinators. Some, for example, change color when the flower no longer has rewards to offer. Others control precisely when pollinators enter or leave by timing when they open and close their petals or when they emit a scent. This fascinating array of pollination repertoires crossfertilizes Angel’s photos with a descriptive text.

Featuring both common and exotic plants and temperate and tropical floral, Pollination Power will entice anyone with a passion for botanicals, from gardeners to botanists alike.

Prairie plants are among the toughest of all ornamentals. While they fascinate gardeners with their beauty and versatility, they require little maintenance. They are highly resistant to insect and disease damage, and they need not be replanted every year.

    In recent years, the idea of growing prairie plants has gained increasing appeal among gardeners. Bob and Beatrice Smith have prepared this practical growing guide—based on their more than fourteen years of experience and experimentation—for all people who wish to grow prairie plants. The Smiths, who have grown all the plants they discuss here, share their wealth of experience with the reader. They recommend the best sites, tell how to plan and prepare the site and how to treat and plant seeds, and share important tips on propagation, transplanting, and managing the prairie garden or landscape. To aid in both planning and identification, the book includes full-color illustrations of all seventy plants.  

 Iowa is the only state that lies entirely within the natural region of the tallgrass prairie. Early documents indicate that 95 percent of the state—close to 30 million acres—was covered by prairie vegetation at the time of Euro-American settlement. By 1930 the prairie sod had been almost totally converted to cropland; only about 30,000 acres of the original “great green sea” remained. Now, in this gracefully illustrated manual, Shirley Shirley has created a step-by-step guide to reconstructing the natural landscape of Iowa and the Upper Midwest.

Chapters on planning, obtaining and selecting plants and seeds, starting seeds indoors, preparing the site, planting, and maintenance set the stage for comprehensive species accounts. Shirley gives firsthand information on soil, moisture, sun, and pH requirements; location, size, and structure; blooming time and color; and propagation, germination, and harvesting for more than a hundred wildflowers and grasses.

Shirley's sketches—all drawn from native plants and from seedlings that she grew herself—will be valuable for even the most experienced gardener. While other books typically feature only the flowering plant, her careful drawings show the three stages of the seedlings, the flower, and the seedhead with seeds as well as the entire plant. This practical and attractive volume will help anyone dedicated to reconstructing the lost “emerald growth” of the historic tallgrass prairie.

As readers and critics around the country agree, any new book by the renowned garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence is like finding a buried treasure. A Rock Garden in the South will not disappoint. Released posthumously, this book is not only a welcome addition to the Lawrence canon, but fills an important gap in the garden literature on the middle South.
Lawrence, in her usual exquisite prose, deals with the full range of rock gardening topics in this work. She addresses the unique problem of cultivating rock gardens in the South, where the growing season is prolonged and humidity and heat are not conducive to such planting. She describes her own experiences in making a rock garden, with excellent advice on placing stones, constructing steps, ordering plants, and making cuttings.
At the same time, what she writes about here is in large part of interest to gardeners everywhere and for gardens with or without rocks. As always, she thoroughly discusses the plants she has tried—recommending bulbs and other perennials of all sorts, annuals, and woody plants—with poetic descriptions of the plants themselves as well as specific and useful cultural advice. A Rock Garden in the South includes an encyclopedia of plants alphabetized by genus and species and divided into two parts: wood and non-woody plants.

"An engaging botanical overview of flowers."-New York Times Book Review

In The Rose's Kiss, Peter Bernhardt presents a fascinating and wide-ranging look at the natural history of flowers—how they look, what they do, and their often hidden interactions with the surrounding environment and other living organisms upon which they depend for their survival. You'll discover why flowers are so colorful, how they evolved, and how insects exploit them for their nectar. This is a book for all flower lovers, from naturalists and gardeners to poets and botanists.

Originally published in 1982, this bestselling collection of gardening writing by William Lanier Hunt--one of the South’s leading gardening writers and horticulturalists--is now available for the first time in paperback. Arranged by months of the year, Southern Gardens, Southern Gardening is filled with useful, commensense instruction, as well as the wisdom and art of gardening.

Native orchids are increasingly threatened by pressure from population growth and development but, nonetheless, still present a welcome surprise to observant hikers in every state and province. Compiled and illustrated by long-time orchid specialist Paul Martin Brown, these pocket guides to the twayblades and adder’s-mouths form part of a series that will cover all the wild orchids of the continental United States and Canada.
     Brown provides general distributional information, time of flowering, and habitat requirements for each species as well as a complete list of hybrids and the many different growth and color forms that can make identifying orchids so intriguing. For the twayblades and adder’s-mouths he includes information on 21 species, 1 additional variety, and 2 hybrids.
     Most twayblades and adder’s-mouths are relatively small plants with tiny green flowers, but a few have richly colored blooms or particularly interesting habits that attract the native orchid enthusiast. Most of these species are easy to identify based upon their general appearance, range, and time of flowering. Answering three simple questions—when, where, and how does it grow?—and comparing the living plant with the striking photos in the backpack-friendly laminated guide should enable both professional and amateur naturalists to achieve the satisfaction of identifying a specific orchid.

Vascular Plants of Minnesota was first published in 1991. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

A definitive reference to the 2,010 vascular plant species (ferns, conifers, and flowering plants) currently found in Minnesota. The maps of he Atlas section show the geographic distribution of each plant, allowing the reader to visualize—for the first time—exactly where a species occurs in the state. Historical plant collections as well as records from detailed surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s by the Minnesota DNR, The Nature Conservancy, and individual researchers are included in this volume.

The flora of Minnesota is of special interest because it represents the western limits of the vast eastern deciduous forest flora, the northern and eastern boundaries of the flora of the prairies and great plains, and the southwestern limits of the northern coniferous forest. These three contrasting continental floras meet more sharply in Minnesota than in other regions.

The Checklist section provides both an authoritative summary of the nomenclature of Minnesota plants and extensive references to taxonomic literature. As such, it is the most complete list ever prepared for the entire state. Arranged alphabetically, group within group, the Checklist provides both Latin and common names for all species, subspecies, and varieties.

Gerald B. Ownbey is an emeritus professor in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. As the curator of the University Herbarium for more than thirty years, he developed its collection of almost 750,000 specimens to make it the largest in the Midwest. Professor Ownbey is the author of Common Wild Flowers of Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 1971).

Thomas Morley is also an emeritus professor in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. In addition to introducing hundreds of students to Minnesota flora in his popular course "Minnesota Plant Life," he is widely recognized for his pioneering efforts to protect remnants of Minnesota's native habitats. Professor Morley is the author of Spring Flora in Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 1966).

As Wisconsin’s population moved from farmsteads into villages, towns, and cities, the state saw a growing interest in gardening as a leisure activity and source of civic pride. In Vintage Wisconsin Gardens, Lee Somerville introduces readers to the region’s ornamental gardens of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showcasing the “vernacular” gardens created by landscaping enthusiasts for their own use and pleasure.

The Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, established during the mid-nineteenth century, was the primary source of advice for home gardeners. Through carefully selected excerpts from WSHS articles, Somerville shares the excitement of these gardeners as they traded cultivation and design knowledge and explored the possibilities of their avocation. Women were frequent presenters at the WSHS annual meetings, and their voices resonate. Their writings, and those of their male colleagues, are a remarkable legacy we can draw on today—learning how Wisconsinites past created and enjoyed their gardens helps us appreciate our own. Filled with period and contemporary images, recommended plant lists, and garden layouts, Vintage Wisconsin Gardens will interest those curious about the history of the state’s cultural landscape and inspire readers to restore or reconstruct period gardens.

Gardeners of today take for granted the many varieties of geraniums, narcissi, marigolds, roses, and other beloved flowers for their gardens. Few give any thought at all to how this incredible abundance came to be or to the people who spent a good part of their lives creating it. These breeders once had prosperous businesses and were important figures in their communities but are only memories now. They also could be cranky and quirky.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, new and exotic species were arriving in Europe and the United States from all over the world, and these plants often captured the imaginations of the unlikeliest of men, from aristocratic collectors to gruff gardeners who hardly thought of themselves as artists. But whatever their backgrounds, they all shared a quality of mind that led them to ask “What if?” and to use their imagination and skills to answer that question themselves. The newest rose from China was small and light pink, but what if it were larger and came in more colors? Lilac was very nice in its way, but what if its blossoms were double and frilly?

While there are many books about plant collectors and explorers, there are none about plant breeders. Drawing from libraries, archives, and the recollections of family members, horticultural historian Judith M. Taylor traces the lives of prominent cultivators in the context of the scientific discoveries and changing tastes of their times. Visions of Loveliness is international in scope, profiling plant breeders from many countries—for example, China and the former East Germany—whose work may be unknown to the Anglophone reader.

In addition to chronicling the lives of breeders, the author also includes chapters on the history behind the plants by genus, from shrubs and flowering trees to herbaceous plants.

This classic of midwestern natural history is back in print with a new format and new photographs. Originally published in 1989, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie introduced many naturalists to the beauty and diversity of the native plants of the huge grasslands that once stretched from Manitoba to Texas. Now redesigned with updated names and all-new photographs, this reliable field companion will introduce tallgrass prairie wildflowers to a new generation of outdoor enthusiasts in the Upper Midwest.

Each species account is accompanied by a brilliant full-page color photograph by botanist Thomas Rosburg. In clear, straightforward, and accessible prose, authors Sylvan Runkel and Dean Roosa provide common, scientific, and family names; the Latin or Greek meaning of the scientific names; habitat and blooming times; and a complete description of plant, flower, and fruit. Particularly interesting is the information on the many ways in which Native Americans and early pioneers used these plants for everything from pain relief to dyes to hairbrushes.

Runkel and Roosa say that prairies can be among the most peaceful places on earth; certainly they are among the most beleaguered. Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie will inspire both amateurs and professionals with the desire to learn more about the wonders of the prairie landscape.

In this book, Peter Bernhardt takes us on a grand tour of the botanical realm, weaving engaging descriptions of the lovely shapes and intriguing habits of flowering plants with considerations of broader questions, such as why there are only six basic shapes of flowers and why the orchid family is so numerous and so bizarre. Everyone from amateur naturalists and gardeners to plant scientists will find Wily Violets and Underground Orchids a lively guide to botanical lore.