Cape Cod Wildflowers: A Vanishing Heritage

Cape Cod Wildflowers, the only comprehensive, Cape-specific wildflower book, is back in print, with a new preface by the authors. In the little more than a decade since the book’s original publication in 1989, development has increasingly encroached on the rich indigenous flora of the Cape, eliminating purple milkweed and yellow thistle there, and lending this guidebook ever greater relevance and poignancy.

Cape Cod Wildflowers features stunning color illustrations of each Cape wildflower, grouped by habitat and complemented by appealing and informative narrative entries. Those who have never experienced the untrammeled Cape Cod lauded by Thoreau and Beston, and those who have witnessed the more recent and rapid degradation of the Cape’s moors, sandplain grasslands, and barrens, will delight in this celebration of Cape Cod wildflowers. The authors address the knowledgeable as well as the novice reader who is always appreciative of, interested in, and willing and able to rise to the defense of native plants. As they wrote in their introduction to the first edition, Cape Cod Wildflowers “is an appreciation, a guide, and a plea for protection.” This book is a must for Cape residents, tourists, naturalists, botanists, and wildflower enthusiasts everywhere.