How To Know the Wild Flowers

How To Know the Wild Flowers
by Mrs. William Starr Dana

346 pages
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893 (1915 printing)
List price: $2.00


There is a certain charm that old books possess - their musty scent brings back memories of something you can't quite put your finger on; something you've smelled before, but can't remember just where or when. Bibliophiles know the perfume well.

When I saw this historical book in a used bookstore, I knew I had to have it. Not only do I love wildflowers, I also love the colored plates and line drawings - over 150 of them - scattered throughout the book.  It's a handy little volume to have, being still useful for identifying many of the wildflowers common in our area.

Plants are sorted by color: white, green, yellow, pink, red, blue and purple, and miscellaneous. If a plant has flowers in two different colors, they are listed in both sections. Both common and botanical names are given, and this is where it gets interesting, due to name changes over the years. Details are given as to the appearance of all parts of the plant.

A small paragraph accompanies each listing and many are beautifully descriptive:

"The small flowers of the bitter-sweet, which appear in June, rarely attract attention.  But in October no lover of color can fail to admire the deep orange pods which at last curl back so as advantageously to display the brilliant scarlet covering of the seeds.  Perhaps we have no fruit which illuminates more vividly the roadside thicket of late autumn; or touches with greater warmth those tumbled overgrown walls which are so picturesque a feature in parts of the country, and do in a small way for our quiet landscapes what vine-covered ruins accomplish for the scenery of the Old World."

The book has been reprinted many times over the years, but if you're lucky enough to find an older copy, it's worth more than the cost, which can be right around five dollars.

Frances Theodora Parsons (née Smith, 1861 - 1952), usually writing as Mrs. William Starr Dana was an American botanist and author active in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Her most important botanical work was How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893), the first field guide to North American wildflowers. It was something of a sensation, the first printing selling out in five days. The work went through several editions in Parsons's lifetime and has remained in print into the 21st century.¹

¹Wikipedia, "Frances Theodora Parsons"