This book describes both garden and wild flowers and explains how they are linked through their families. A major aim of the book is to encourage readers to look at the detailed structure of flowers and to help them to understand how flowers are classified into families.
The author is Alan Birkett and this is an eBook available as a download to the Books app of iMacs, Apple Laptops, iPads and iPhones from the Apple Books Store.
Use this link to find the book on Apple Books
It is also available from Amazon Kindle books as a download to the Kindle Fire and other Android and Apple devices using the Kindle app.
Use this link to find the book on Amazon
The book describes 42 families that between them contain many of the garden and wild flowers found in Britain. There are over 700 photographs covering 424 flowering plant species, 253 of which are found in gardens and 171 in the wild. In each family, the book illustrates similarities and differences between wild and garden flowers.
It explains why flowers take the forms they do and uses close-up photographs to illustrate pollination and fruit formation. The book describes how species have evolved within families.
An ingenious set of identification keys helps to identify families and species. Botanical terms are explained using images and non-technical terms. The source and date of introduction into Britain of non-native species is described. The book will appeal to gardeners, horticulture and biology students and anyone who enjoys looking at flowers in the garden or countryside.
Some screenshots, taken from the eBook, are shown below.
About the Author
Alan Birkett is an ecologist with an Engineering degree, a Biology degree and a PhD in Animal Behaviour. Over a ten year period he carried out research on the effect of black rhino, elephant and giraffe on savannah ecosystems in South Africa and Kenya and had several scientific papers published. During this time he became convinced that many guides to trees and flowers were too complex and he set about developing a series of photographic guides in the form of apps, websites and books which would be easy to use but scientifically accurate. He is the co-developer of two editions of an Apple iPad app – Tree Guide UK, the developer of a website – Tree Guide UK which is linked to a Facebook page – Trees and Flowers and is the author of a print book, Field Guide to Trees of Britain and Europe, which was published in 2017. Flowers is an eBook which extends this area of work into the recognition and understanding of Wild and Garden Flowers by linking them through their families.