Wild Green Things in the City; A Book of Weeds.

by Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden

Introduces in text and detailed illustrations the characteristics of common plants that grow in the city during various months of the year.

Genres: Nature

56 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1972

About the author

Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden, a renowned and popular botanical artist whose subjects ranged from the flowers found in Shakespeare to the weeds found in New York City, was the author of more than 20 books.
She worked mainly in watercolor, producing elegantly detailed images of flowers, insects, herbs and birds.
Two of her books won awards from the American Library Association. Her work was also shown in museums and at botanical gardens, including the Smithsonian, the New York Public Library and the Denver Art Museum.

Reviews

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant botanical illustrator Anne Ophelia Dowden created this book on the plants 'we find in these truly neglected city lots,' mostly in her home of New York City but with sidelights on Denver and Los Angeles. Laid out around the plant year and plant structures: April: Roots, May: Leaves, June: Flowers, Summer: Composites and Grasses, Autumn: Seeds, with additional chapters on [Weed] survival and Plants and People (for us in the 21st century, a reminder that the pollution of the mid-20th century US was a serious threat to plant and people life).

The text is instructional and relatively engaging, but it is the perfect, amazing illustrations, both of individual and arrangements of weeds, and engrossing tiny weedscapes that draw the reader into a minature green world. The index helps one find the depictions of the covered weeds, but just going out with this as a viewing guide leaves one feeling vastly more confident of one's city botany. (For me, it was the sow-thistle and wild aster.)

I have to own a copy of this, and soon.