Field Guide to Wild Flowers of South Africa

by John Manning

South Africa, together with Lesotho and Swaziland, has a diverse landscape and equally varied flora, which encompasses some 19,000 shrubs and herbs, a large proportion of which bear flowers of intricate and often stunning beauty. Field Guide to Wildflowers of South Africa describes more than 1,100 of these, highlighting the most conspicuous species and those most likely to be encountered across the country. A novel identification aid and easy-to-use keys guide users to the correct family and genus, while individual species descriptions, clear photographs, distribution maps and flowering seasons help pinpoint the plant. With this guide, wildflower enthusiasts at all levels will now be able to identify plants accurately in any part of South Africa.

Genres: Plants, Reference

487 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2009

About the author

Dr John Charles Manning (born 1962) is a South African botanist based in the Compton Herbarium, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch, South Africa.

The standard author abbreviation J.C.Manning is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

Although primarily a plant taxonomist, his wide-ranging interests include pollination biology, anatomy, evolution and speciation, and popular botany. He has written or co-authored over 200 scientific papers and several southern African wild flower guides, mostly illustrated with his photographs. He has a particular interest in popularising southern Africa’s wild flowers.

Dr Manning’s contributions to botany have been impressive and extensive, including many popular as well as professional contributions. The contribution made by Dr Manning to systematics in Southern Africa has been of huge significance over many years, in terms of their scientific papers and curation of African herbarium collections in South Africa and North America.

Reviews

[J St Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book contains an interesting introduction to South African floral regions and plant families as well as useful general knowledge on flora and identification. Of course it cannot contain all the thousands of individual species to be seen but the photos are good and the book contains a decent selection of species.