The flower-finder

Excerpt from The Flower-Finder N 0 special study or training is required to follow these charts. It will only be necessary, for one not familiar with botanical terms, to master the directions, particularly the directions regarding the form and arrangement of the leaves and owers. So much botanical knowledge it will harm no one to acquire. Peculiarities of the plants, owers, and fruits, obvious to the non-botanist, but fairly constant, have been selected, while botanical terms have been as far as possible avoided and replaced by words in common use. I should be sorry if this plan suggests that it is not worth while to learn the scientific Classification of the owers, or that it is a matter of no interest to study their habits and their method of fertilization. But the main object of this book is to facilitate the recognition of the owers and fruits; it is little likely that anyone interested enough to go so far will go no farther. If a ower has eluded the searcher I have generally found it due to the fact that the charts have been tried without study ing the explanatory chapter. The commonest stumbling-block has been the failure to learn the meaning of the terms shrub and herb, composite ower, and compound leaf.