PREFACE 
traced to the group in which it will be found. For assistance 
in case one recognizes the family to which a specimen belongs, 
an index by families is inserted at the end of the book, indicating 
on what pages and under what colors the members of each 
family are found. All has been compressed into convenient 
form for field use. 
No special study or training is required to follow these charts. 
It will only be necessary, for one not familiar with botanical 
terms, to master the directions, particularly the directions 
regarding the form and arrangement of the leaves and flowers. 
So much botanical knowledge it will harm no one to acquire. 
PecuHarities of the plants, flowers, and fruits, obvious to the 
non-botanist, but fairly constant, have been selected, while 
botanical terms have been as far as possible avoided and replaced 
by words in common use. 
I should be sorry if this plan suggests that it is not worth 
while to learn the scientific classification of the flowers, or that 
it is a matter of no interest to study their habits and their 
method of fertilization. But the main object of this book is to 
facilitate the recognition of the flowers and fruits; it is little 
likely that anyone interested enough to go so far will go no 
farther. 
If a flower has eluded the searcher I have generally found it 
due to the fact that the charts have been tried without study- 
ing the explanatory chapter. The commonest stumbling-block 
has been the failure to learn the meaning of the terms shrub 
and herb, composite flower, and compound leaf. 
For the families and the Latin names Gray's Manual (Seventh 
Edition) has been followed. For other Latin names Britton 
and Brown should be consulted. These authorities have been 
my main reliance for facts, though many other books have been 
consulted. In names likely to be mispronounced, the grave 
accent is inserted for the long sound, the acute for the short, as 
in the Manual. In case the derivation of the generic name is 
not given it may generally be assumed it is either unknown or 
is an original plant name. 
