ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About thirty years ago when I first began doing field botany, I searched high and low for a book to get me started. I found plenty of 'how to' books on birdwatching but none on studying wild flowers – just field guides.
So after I had learned quite a lot by myself, from plenty of practical experience, book study and listening to other expert botanists, and I still couldn't find a book that focussed on how to get started, I decided to write it myself.
That was how Flowers in the Field came to be written. When that proved popular, both with beginners and with botanists who were somewhat more experienced, I was asked to run workshops for the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland) in association with Plantlife.
The first Pocket Guide to Wildflower Families was written to go with those workshops. (For more information on current wokshops click on INFO.) This Guide has now been updated as a free-standing introduction to wildflower identification through families.
Then there was a demand for a similar treatment of grasses, then sedges & rushes, so the books just kept coming!
I haven't even got O-level Biology. Everything I know about botany has been learnt from experience, advice and practice. But botany doesn't have to be like a difficult school subject!
That's why I want to make botany easy, enjoyable and accessible to everyone: oldsters and youngsters, hill-walkers and dog-walkers, students and surveyors and anyone else who wants or needs to know about plant ID.
Plants are the base that supports all other wildlife – insects, birds, mammals and humans. The more we know about plants, the better we can conserve our world for future generations.
