In this volume, Elizabeth Silverthorne has gathered an intriguing array of folklore about forty-four of Texas' most fascinating wildflowers, such as water lily, Queen Anne's Lace, honeysuckle, dogwood, and morning glory.

A comprehensive field guide to Texas wildflowers. Entries are grouped by flower color for easy identification.

Information on the range, size, identification, and scientific name of 100 flowers native to Texas.

These beautiful watercolor images of Texas wild flowers were created in the 1840s and 1850s by Eliza Griffin Johnston, bound into a book, and given to her husband, General Albert Sidney Johnston for his birthday. In 1862, during the Civil War, General Johnston was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. In 1894, Eliza's friend, Rebecca Jane Fisher, of The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, began acquiring artifacts from the Republic of Texas era for a museum and asked Eliza for something that had belonged to the General. It was through those efforts that the chapter received the book, which remained in an Austin bank vault for many years. In 2008, the images were digitalized and the members wanted the beauty of the book to be shared with others. With more than 100 watercolor paintings and a description of each flower, this book is a treasure from Texas's past and an artistic gem.

"In photographs and text, describes hundreds of Texas wildflowers. The 400 photographs are arranged by color to aid identification. The book describes past and present uses of the plants, the stories behind their scientific and common names, their medicinal and toxic properties, Native American lore, and other interesting facts and stories"--Provided by publisher.

“No single existing publication includes the kind of information featured in this book,” a natural history of the flora of the Lone Star State (A. Michael Powell, Professor of Biology Emeritus and Director of the Herbarium, Sul Ross State University). With some 6,000 species of plants, Texas has extraordinary botanical wealth and diversity. Learning to identify plants is the first step in understanding their vital role in nature, and many field guides have been published for that purpose. But to fully appreciate how Texas’s native plants have sustained people and animals from prehistoric times to the present, you need Remarkable Plants of Texas. In this intriguing book, Matt Warnock Turner explores the little-known facts—be they archaeological, historical, material, medicinal, culinary, or cultural—behind our familiar botanical landscape. In sixty-five entries that cover over eighty of our most common native plants from trees, shrubs, and wildflowers to grasses, cacti, vines, and aquatics, he traces our vast array of connections with plants. Turner looks at how people have used plants for food, shelter, medicine, and economic subsistence; how plants have figured in the historical record and in Texas folklore; how plants nourish wildlife; and how some plants have unusual ecological or biological characteristics. Illustrated with over one hundred color photos and organized for easy reference, Remarkable Plants of Texas can function as a guide to individual species as well as an enjoyable natural history of our most fascinating native plants.

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Susan Blackwell Ramsey’s A Mind Like This is a work of humor and wit, unexpectedly delightful and full of surprises as it reflects on the oddness of everyday life, the natural world, literary history, popular culture, and more. Everything is fair game for Ramsey, who finds poetry in love and sickness and life, of course, but also in knitting and unreliable bladders and the peculiar name of Kalamazoo. Neruda makes an appearance, as do Eric Clapton and Brahms, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and Jimmy Stewart. Whether observing the pickled heads of Peter the Great’s offenders, wondering “How to Seduce Henry David Thoreau,” becoming the insecure voice of Kalamazoo, or puzzling over the intricacies of the mind that blocks a dear friend’s birthday while preserving the name of Emily Dickinson’s dog in perpetuity, Ramsey’s collection is wise and funny, allusive and deeply felt. Purchase the audio edition.