Flowers of Rumania [antikvár]

The photographs reproduced in this album form a choice, variedbouquet of spontaneous flowers of Rumania. The author, a youngdoctor, as much in love with the world of plants as the venerabledoctor-botanists of the past century who laid the solid foundationsfor the study of flowers and geo-botany in our country, has endea-voured to present the plants that form the subject of his descriptionby surprising them in their natural setting, ranging from the plainsto the mountains, and at different stages of their life, from earlyspring to winter.This abundant material has been classified according to geo-bota-nical, phenological and aesthetic criteria; then, grouped in theirnatural order, plants and their flowers march past us in processionaccording to the main species to which they belong.The more than 200 photos show various types of vegetation, orlandscapes which form the natural setting for the species of plantspresented, delighting our eye by the many-coloured and variedaspect of the infinite range of flowers and inflorescences. We cer-tainly owe our aesthetic delight, to a great extent, to the authorand publishers, who have spared no effort in competently producinga splendid book. However, the supreme aim of their work has beento render, as truthfully as possible, Nature's matchless skill increating these wonderful flowers man's most delicate and inno-cent life companions.To understand this wonderful gift of Nature more thoroughly, weshould not regard flowers only with the eyes of admirers, but alsowith those of a naturalist who has discovered that their beauty,fragrance and infinite variety is the result of a natural process ofselection and adaptation which has lasted tens of millions of years.The first angiosperms, the floral envelope of which, constitutes,in fact, what is familiarly termed "flower", were found in a fossi-lized state in the layers of the lower Cretaceous. The vast processof reproduction had already started at that immemorial time.Insects in search of food found pollen and nectar in flowers. Certainsmall birds also began to like this nectar. Flying from flower toflower, these small, winged creatures unwillingly started cross-pollination, which has proved the best way of reproducing specimensand even better for the evolution of plant species, thanks to themuch more numerous and varied possibilities of combinations be-tween features belonging to more or less remote individuals, oreven different species. To these diminutive stocks of pollen andnectar, insects and small birds found their way more easily as they