As informative as it is lovely, Seeing Flowers (Timber Press, $29.95) embodies the same features of grace and balance that it celebrates in its subject. The angiosperm is a marvel of design and efficiency; it also comes in an amazing variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Teri Dunn Chace, former Horticulture magazine editor and author of The Anxious Gardener’s Book of Answers, provides the words, Robert Llewellyn, the photographer for Seeing Trees, Remarkable Trees of Virginia, and other landscape albums, took the pictures. Together, the two present twenty-eight families of flowers, from buttercups and daisies to orchids and roses, in stunning new ways. Chace’s essays include practical growing tips, facts about petals and sepals, and unusual lore. Llewellyn’s pictures, using a technique developed for microscopes that involves stitching together images taken from various focal points, offer the closest thing to a bee’s-eye view of these plants a human observer is likely to get.
