Small Wonders: A Closer Look at Some Hard-to-See Flowers

Following his well-received books - Mountain Wildflowers of Southern Arizona: A Field Guide to the Santa Catalina Mountains and Other Nearby Ranges, 2011, and Mountain Trees of Southern Arizona: A Field Guide, 2012, Frank S. Rose has now taken a closer look at over two hundred species of plants found in Southern Arizona. Using a powerful close-up camera, he has taken over 1,000 color images to allow the viewer to see flowers not normally seen, that regularly get trampled because the entire plant looks so plain from a human’s eye level, or that get overlooked because the flowers are nearly invisible to the naked eye. Rose has taught us to see each of them in a new way. Each of these small wonders gets its own page, with views of the entire plant, to help with identification, and a zoom-in on the unexpected beauty. The book is part field guide and part slideshow of wonders seldom seen. Many of the flowering plants in Small Wonders are not included in the usual wildflower guides but are collected here in greater detail than ever before, revealing their truly astonishing hidden beauty. This is a book meant to please people with no particular training in botany as well as those who are well acquainted with the small wonders of the plant world.