Pictorial guide to alpine plants. . - Guide - 'Alpine Plants of North America: An Encyclopedia of Mountain Flowers from the Rockies to Alaska' - book review

Hike above the tree line almost anywhere in western North America and you're bound to see tiny clumps of flowers clinging tenaciously to arid scree-covered slopes. These are America's native alpine plants. When Graham Nicholls, a British nurseryman specializing in alpines, came to the United States to see these magnificent plants in the wild, he was surprised that no one had written a book about them yet. So he did, and quite successfully too--Alpine Plants of North America: An Encyclopedia of Mountain Flowers from the Rookies to Alaska (Timber Press, Portland, 2002; $50; www.timberpress.com or 800/327-5680).

Covering some 650 species, the 344-page volume is organized as a pictorial encyclopedia of plants that grow in the West's alpine areas from the southern Rockies to Alaska's Brooks Range. Color photographs show the jewel-like beauty of these plants, such as Silene hookeri bolanderi (shown at left). Rock gardeners will appreciate Nicholls's instructions for cultivating everything from Aquilegia to Zauschneria.

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