The Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland: A New Guide to Our Wild Flowers - Softcover

The first ever fully-illustrated, fully-mapped guide to the British and Irish flora. Its restriction to the British Isles alone allows far more detail and more local information, and identification which is made easier with the inclusion of extensive maps. Includes specific details about plants appearing in certain areas and coloured maps designed to make location and identification easy, this book also includes details of local specialities for the Isles of Scilly. Also featured is an illustrated survey of recently disappeared British and Irish plants, some of which may return. With over 2000 detailed colour paintings and more than 800 maps, this is the most extensively illustrated wild flower guide to Britain and Ireland yet. Coloured, boxed keys to plants in complex or difficult groups are provided to assist ID. The Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland features information about grasses, which are often omitted in other, shorter books, along with sedges, rushes, horsetails and clubmosses. Ferns, though not strictly speaking flowering plants, are also included too.

Marjorie Blamey is the doyenne of European botanical artists, the best known internationally and the most successful: her earlier books have sold over a million copies. Before devoting herself to botanical illustration in middle age, Mrs Blamey had in turns been a professional actress, photographer, wartime ambulance driver, and for 20 years a farmer's wife. She and her co-worker husband, Philip, live in St Germans, Cornwall. Richard Fitter lives in Chinnor, Oxfordshire and is the most experienced writer of field guides in Britain. He combines an encyclopaedic knowledge of British natural history with absolute clarity and precision in description and, like Marjorie Blamey, a level of energy rare in people half their age - both are in their 80s, yet constantly working on new projects. Alastair Fitter is a mere 52, Richard's second son and Professor of Biology at the University of York. Already the author of earlier guides with his father and with Marjorie Blamey, here he has contributed all the maps.