Secrets of Wildflowers: A Delightful Feast of Little-Known Facts, Folklore, and History

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Without wildflowers the world would be a pretty dull place.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 field guide, The Secrets of Wildflowers is one banquet no nature aficionado can pass up.Wildflowers are more than just decorations. They are an essential part of our environment. They feed insects, birds, animals, and even humans. They hold together and condition the soil, they are the "parents" of our garden flowers, and they provide many modern medicines or the inspirations for them.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.For more than 25 years, Jack Sanders has been one of North America's most ardent and colorful champions of wildflowers. His writing has for years elicited praise. "One of the best things that has ever happened to wildflowers, " wrote Smithsonian magazine of Sanders's Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles. Similar praise has come from the likes of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Wildflower. "He tells actual stories about rare and common plants and describes them in historical frameworks that make you want to run out and find them, " wrote the Chicago Tribune. The Secrets of Wildflowers picks up where field guides leave off. It is destined to be an indispensable and well-worn addition to any library. More than a simple reference, this is a book that's meant to be read and enjoyed.