Prairie Beauty: Wildflowers of the Canadian Prairies

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Neil Jennings, an avid outdoorsman and fly-fisher, has written these
fine books for lovers of wildflowers. As he points out, each guide is
for the non-botanist or amateur who wants to be able to identify plants
in the field.

The guides are organized first by colour and then by family—“a
logical arrangement for the non-botanist,” Jennings tell us,
“because the first thing a person notes about a flower is its
colour.” This presumes, of course, that users of the book only want to
identify plants in bloom. Jennings also tells us that the volumes are
not meant to be comprehensive in their coverage of the wildflowers of
these areas.

In the introductory material, Jennings seems to have only grudgingly
included the scientific names of plants, saying that he has included
them only “to promote specificity” and suggesting that the reader
can choose to learn the scientific names or not. In the text, however,
he dedicates considerable space to the origin of the scientific name of
each plant.

Each plant is presented in a single page, and half of that page
features a picture of the plant in bloom. If the plant produces berries,
there is often a second photograph showing fruit. The photographs are
sharp and large enough to be used for plant identification. The text,
occupying the rest of the page, includes a quite-detailed and helpful
physical description of the plant, name-origin discussion, and sometimes
interesting facts or indigenous people’s use.

There is considerable geographic overlap among these volumes, and as a
result, much duplication of text—though most of the photos of
overlapping plants are unique and different.

These are nicely produced books that would satisfy the needs of most
amateur naturalists in their quest to identify wildflowers.