PREFACE 



This book is for those to whom it is difficult, or tedious, 

 or perhaps impossible, to find wild flowers in technical 

 works, and irritating not to find them in "How to Know" 

 books. 



It includes all the more conspicuous wild flowers that 

 grow north of Virginia, and east of the Mississippi, except 

 the grasses, sedges, and rare or technical species not likely 

 to be interesting to the amateur. Professional botanists have 

 several ways of sorting this mass of species into plant fami- 

 lies, but the present book ignores such technicalities, for the 

 average nature-lover cares more about the identity of plants, 

 than about the family of them. 



The arrangement of the book is, therefore, quite different 

 from the current manuals. In them the sequence of plant 

 families is obligatory. Here simpler and more direct methods 

 of identification are used. 



Norman Taylor 

 Brooklyn Botanic Garden 



