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

Sunset, Feb, 2003 by Jim McCausland

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.