Bee Amazed!

We know that bees are amazing creatures. They can build hives of architectural and structural complexity which astound us. They live in perfectly organised, efficient and hard-working communities. They can communicate with each other - a bee which finds a good source of pollen is able to tell fellow members of the swarm its direction …

Florapedia

Carol Gracie – you may remember her from those two fabulous books of hers, Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast and Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast – has just written the perfect book for that impossible-to-satisfy gardening nerd in your life. This is a book which has across the board – I suppose I should say …

Getting into the Habitat.

This is the second edition of Britain's Habitats, A Field Guide to the Wildlife Habitats of Great Britain and Ireland by Sophie Lake, Durwyn Liley, Robert Still and Andy Swash, another excellent title in the WildGuides series from Princeton University Press which will be a valuable resource for anybody with an interest in our wild …

Britain’s Orchids – A New Book!

Orchids by nature are inclined to be variable and identifying them accurately can be quite a challenge. Those who come to an interest in orchids from a non-botanical background quickly find that their previous experience of colour-organised identification guides is now of little relevance as their search for identification moves from colour to morphology – …

Not Once, but Twice!

I recently read Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast, A Natural History by Carol Gracie and thought it one of the best wildflower books I had ever read and, very significantly, it was one with perfect relevance to readers at this side of the Atlantic as we grow many of those very same wildflowers in our gardens. …

Flowers – Wild and Garden!

Lavish praise, a very generous book review, can be counter-productive for there is within us all that little streak of cynicism which says it may be too good to be true. This is my predicament with Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast, A Natural History by Carol Gracie for I fear that you may be inclined …

Britain’s Ferns – A Review.

It works! Britain’s Ferns is intended to provide a practical and functional approach to the identification of ferns, and it works! I put it to the test with a number of local ferns and one horsetail and the identification keys, which are at the heart of the book, guided me through the process in simple …