Book Description

Excerpt from Plants of Rocky Mountain National Park The wild flowers of Rocky Mountain National Park are one of its main attractions. They paint its fields, meadows, hillsides, and rocky gorges in all the colors of the rainbow. There has been a con stant demand for an illustrated guide to these flowers, and this publica tion has been prepared in response to that demand. It is the result of several years' study of the plants of the region. Emphasis has been put on the outstanding field characters of the plants described and on their habitats. Keys for identification and an illustrated glossary are included. The chapter on Mountain Plants at Home deals with the relations between the plants and their severe mountain environ ment and their adaptations to that environment. The keys have been made as practical and simple as possible. They have been previously published, tested, and revised, and the writer feels that they will be useful to all persons who are seriously interested in the identification of our common wild flowers, whether or not they have had training in botany. In order to keep the keys from being long and unwieldy, some of the inconspicuous plants are not included. However, the names of all seed plants and ferns known to grow in the park are given in the text. Technical terms have been avoided as much as possible, but because it is impossible to differentiate between related plants by using only every-day English, a few technical terms have been employed to assure accuracy. These are adequately explained by drawings and definitions in the glossary. Approximately 700 species are included. Specimens of most of these have been collected by the writer and are in the herbarium of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Most of the collecting has been done on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, and it is probable that some plants not included herein will be found on the western slope. A thorough study of the grass and sedge families has not been attempted, but lists of those species known to occur have been in cluded. The region that has been intensively studied is that of the Rocky Mountain National Park and the territory surrounding Estes Park, but this book will be found useful above feet throughout the mountains of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.