By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services
CHAPEL HILL — One of the most colorful books ever produced in North
Carolina — and one of the most popular — will make a new appearance in
May as the University of North Carolina Press publishes the second
edition of Wild Flowers of North Carolina.
More than 100,000 copies of the floral reference's first edition have
sold since 1968, making it one of the state's all-time bestsellers. That
volume, which the New Yorker called "a model for any state field guide,"
also quickly became a favorite among naturalists and plant lovers
throughout the South.
Among flowers featured are those with such lovely common names as
nodding ladies' tresses, showy lady's slipper, passion flower, hearts
a'bustin, pussy-toes, bride's feathers and fawn's breath. Others are
Indian paint brush, mistflower, black-eyed Susan, meadow beauty,
Carolina silverbell, fairywand, honeycups, Maypops, pinkladies and sweet
wake robin.
Some wild species' names are less appealing but just as evocative:
bastard toadflax, beard tongue, beggar's ticks, marsh fleabane,
snakeroot, sneezeweed, spatter dock, sourgrass, crow poison, harvest
lice, cancer-root and spiderwort.
Entries run the gamut from Adam and Eve to Zenobia and from the
extremely common dandelion, found throughout much of the world, to the
rare and ever-fascinating Venus flytrap, which grows wild only near the
coastal border between the Carolinas.
Folk uses for many of the plants also are given such as food, beverages,
dyes and medicines for a host of problems including diabetes, burns,
snakebite and leukemia.
The new edition adds 100 more species of flowering plants to the 400
already depicted in color in the first. Authors are the late Dr. William
S. Justice, an Asheville surgeon; Dr. C. Ritchie Bell, professor
emeritus of botany at UNC and founder of the N.C. Botanical Garden; and
Dr. Anne H. Lindsey, Bell's wife and co-owner of Laurel Hill Press.
"Even though this was a labor of love, the second edition was a whole
lot more work because we now have charts too with just about anything
you would want to know about the plants," Bell said. "That includes
where and when the flowers bloom, what conditions they thrive in,
whether they are poisonous or not and whether they are endangered or
threatened."
Also featured is a key character code for each entry for help in
identifying plants by their characteristic structure, flowers and
leaves, along with references, a glossary, numerous drawings, several
appendices and an index.
