Collins Wild Flower Guide

Product Information

This is an indispensable guide for all those with an interest in the countryside, whether amateur or expert, and is beautifully packaged to lend itself both as gift or self-purchase. Following on from the successful first edition of the Collins Flower Guide, this second edition has been renamed to reflect the fact that it covers wild and not cultivated plants.

I love the 'little circles' around pertinent points where there are close similarities - draws the eye immediately to the bits you need to compare.And thats just the illustrations - each section has a 'proper' key to wade through for those with detailed botanical knowledge. I have never seen such a comprehensive coverage of the natural fauna , to be found around the British Isles . This is an indispensable guide for all those with an interest in the countryside, whether amateur or expert. This means, that you will have to thumb through the book if you do not know the genus that the plant you are trying to identify belongs to.

It covers Britain and Ireland and contains a combination of illustrations and identification keys: those interested in wild plants may have previously seen this combination in the Francis Rose guide. This is quite a thick heavy book so we usually leave this one at home for reference use rather than for field use. The effort and technical expertise given in this book is due to the valiant effort of many taxonomists, and my hat comes off! The keys have all been improved on and updated (and in some cases rewritten entirely), making the book inherently more accessible. There are no new illustrations as such, but substantial text corrections and updates in addition to the taxonomic changes.

David Streeter is Reader in Ecology in the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sussex and a member of the Editorial Board of the prestigious Collins New Naturalist series. There have been some more substantial revisions to some of the keys, presumably improvements resulting from a review or from feedback that the authors have received.

I have found the book straightforward to use and it is a good introduction to identification keys for those who have just started looking more closely at some of the plants they come across when they are out in the countryside. The only slight fault, that may cause some readers a little consternation, is that the identification key is divided up by genus and spread throughout the book. The APG system has now been incorporated into the most recent edition of Stace’s standard British flora and has been followed in this new edition of the Guide. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. This has been my main botanical reference book for 8 years of working as an ecologist, carrying out a variety of botanical surveys.

Helpful information about habitats of wild flowers and useful tips to aid identification are included along with a botanical hotspots section detailing 100 rarer species.

Species are described and illustrated on the same page, with up-to-date authoritative text aiding identification.Does not have a particularly user friendly key so not the best book for quickly finding the identify of a flower unless you have rough idea to start with.