BOOK REVIEW 



Wild Flowers of the Alleghanies 1 



This book, a flora of the Alleghanies from Alabama to 

 Canada, is written for plant lovers and naturalists who are not 

 trained botanists. Attractively bound and illustrated it is a 

 pleasure to glance through the book or dip in it at random to 

 read the charmingly written accounts of the uses to which vari- 

 ous plants have been put or the stories connected with them. 

 The book describes some 1500 species of plants. Many of them 

 are illustrated by line drawings by F. S. Matthews and there are 

 eight colored plates. There is a key to families written by Dr. 

 Karl Wiegand, also a key to the genera of compositae and one 

 to the species of bedstraw (Galium). The lack of keys to the 

 genera of other families, and to species of the larger genera is a 

 rather serious defect. The scientific names used are made second- 

 ary in importance to the common ones. Gray's manual is fol- 

 lowed in most cases as to names, but no synonyms are given. 

 There is an illustrated key to families, with descriptions of all 

 the families treated in the book, each illustrated by a series of 

 drawings showing details of the structure of some flower of the 

 family. The separate drawings are lettered, but no explanation 

 is given of what the letters refer to, it being left to the reader to 

 interpret, which is not difficult in most cases. Such families as 

 the grasses, sedges, willows and oaks are omitted, probably as 

 being too difficult for or as lacking in interest to the users of the 

 book. Unfortunately there are frequent slight inaccuracies, such 

 as describing the leaves of the lesser duckweed {Lemma minor) 

 as being about half an inch in diameter, or stating that the 

 flowers of the cactus grow from the side leaf, or referring to the 

 joints of the pods of the tick trefoil as achenes. Errors such as 

 these may be due to careless proof reading or to carelessness in 

 writing but they are not serious enough to prevent the book 

 being very useful to the flower lover. The author, a pharmacist, 

 describes the book as a labor of love. The way in which it is 

 written shows his appreciation of beauty of form, color and ad- 

 aptation to function. The descriptions are in many cases from 



1 Wild Flowers of the Alleghanies — Joseph E. Harned. xxxi -f 670 pages. 

 Published by the author, Okland, Md. 1931. 



95 



