Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers

A wag once called wildflowers "weeds with a press agent". Whether they're "weeds" or "wildflowers", nothing in nature does more to beautify the world. Their myriad colours and endless designs can be found almost anywhere the sun hits the earth - from fields to woods, deserts to ponds, and even in junkyards, dumps, and rising from cracks in shopping centre parking lots. Today, interest in wildflowers is at an all-time high. Labour-intensive formal gardens and lawns are being replaced with native, mostly care-free plants. Wildflower field guides abound, but for many wildflower aficionados just being able to identify a wildflower by name is no longer enough. For more than 25 years Jack Sanders has been an enthusiastic press agent for wildflowers, delving deeply into their lives and lore in magazine articles and in his award-winning newspaper column. In this book, Sanders examines in depth the lives and lore of hundreds of North America's most popular wildflowers, including the origins of their names, their place in history and literature, what uses ancient herbalists found for them (and what uses they have now), where they grow, and how to grow or transplant them. Organized by spring, early summer, late summer and fall, this volume features two-page scenic line drawings depicting each season's flowers in their native environment. The flowers appear in full colour on the cover and endpapers.