This is a selective guide to fifty genera of wildflowers chosen by the authors to represent a variety of lifestyles and habitats. For each wildflower there are five sections: Introduction, Wild and Garden Relatives, What You Can Observe, Flower-watching, and Through the Seasons. There is also a glossary at the end of the book.

For each wildflower, there is a lovely watercolor to introduce the flower, and then other drawings in the rest of its chapter. There are no color photos, however, which may impair one’s ability to distinguish clearly one wildflower from another. The book also seems geared to more temperate regions - I could not locate any desert wildflowers in this book. ( )