Mirror of Flowers

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Mirror of Flowers, by Dorothea Eastwood

I am much better at reading about flowers than I am at growing them.  This is a really nice little book of essays about flowers, written in the late 1940s in Britain.  Dorothea Eastwood wanders all over the territory of the amateur botanist and flower-hunter.

Eastwood really has some fun stuff in here.  There is an essay about all the wildflowers she was able to find in urban London (bomb sites are very fruitful territory); one about botany as the first accepted science for young women to study as education became improved; a nice tour through her collection of old and antique volumes of botany; folk magic and folk names as pertaining to flowers; and more about history and the joys of finding the elusive Filmy Fern.

Makes especially good bedside reading.  And it's old enough that there is no photo available online.  My copy is in really good shape, dustjacket and all.

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