Wayside and Woodland Blossoms: A Pocket Guide to British Wild Flowers for the Country Rambler

by Edward Step

Wayside and Woodland Blossoms - A Pocket Guide to British Wild Flowers for the Country Rambler is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Genres: Nature

336 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 1895

About the author

1855-1931

Reviews

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure exactly when this book was printed, but it's old enough that it doesn't say when it was printed, which probably means it's on the order of 100 years old. It's hard-bound, but a nice tidy size that would fit easily into an overcoat pocket for walks out of doors. It has well over 100 color illustrations of the flowers described, and my copy exudes a faint but pleasant and distinctive "old book" smell that, one imagines, has some tiny bit of English woodland and wayside in it. Back when there were considerably more English woodlands and waysides to walk in.

Though doubtless not intended to be read cover to cover, that's what I did, although it was a nightstand book that took me several months to get through; I read (and looked at the illustration for) about 1 or 2 flowers per night. Often, this was followed by a smartphone-enabled wikipedia search on the flower in question. The tone of the text is, if not exactly archaic, then at least not to be mistaken for 21st century; this is either a bonus or an annoying distraction, depending on the reader. The illustrations are not by any means the highest level that botanical art can reach, but they're perfectly serviceable, especially given how numerous they are. So what if Mabel E. Step was no Albrecht Duerer; she was still a great deal better than I am in regards to botanical art.

I recall when my daughter was little, she would often ask me to identify a flower which we passed. I could almost never do so. I have over the years managed to learn how to distinguish hedge parsley from showy evening primrose, but of course by now my teenaged daughter could scarcely care less. This book, however, comes from a time when a considerably higher portion of the population had an interest in knowing what they were looking at when they walked in nature, and reading it gives one a bit of a connection to such a time.

[Andrew Spink · Rating 3 out of 5]

One the face of it, a charming Victorian pocket flora. Its aim is to describe common plants in non technical terms for ramblers. In that, it fails. Terms like "involucral scales" are definitely not going to be understood by people with no botanical background, also not in 1895.
The age doesn't make it easier. A surprisingly large number of names have changed, making it sometimes hard to know what a plant is. I'm still not sure what Hypnum triquetum iis supposed to be.
The book repeats the myth that 'bluebell' means a different plant in England and Scotland. I remember being told by no less that a professor of botany at Glasgow University (Jim Dixon) that this is nonsense and is just passed on from book to book, with no basis in reality. At least now I know that this is an old story.
But I should not be so negative. The book is nicely written and full of interesting things. I knew that the potamo of Potamogeton was from the Greek for river, but not that 'geiton' means neighbourhood.