Welsh Journals

BOOK REVIEWS Wild Flowers in the Hedgerows, Wild Flowers of the Waterways and Marshes and Wild Flowers of the Coast, by E. A. Ellis, are the first three books in the Jarrold Wild Flowers Series, published by Jarrold Colour Publications, Norwich, at 20p each. Dr. Ellis was Keeper of Natural History at Norwich Castle Museum until 1956 and author of The Broads, the standard work on the Broadlands published in the New Naturalist series. Each booklet has 32 pages and over 40 terse, illuminating descriptions of flowers. Did you know that Lesser Celandine tubers are scattered by rodents and pheasants which dig them out as food, despite their peppery taste? That ladybirds hibernate in Red Campion seed-capsules? That Marguerites are so called after St. Margaret of Cortona, patron of herbalists? Each description is teeming with information of this nature in addition to the more essential knowledge. Butterbur (Petasites hybridus) colonies in most places in Britain, we are told, consist wholly of male plants, which spread by offshoots: only in a few Midland localities can one find female flowers, producing fluffy seeds. The colour photographs are quite superb. The honey-bee shimmers on the Dewberry, the Water Bistort floats Ophelia-like in the water. The Observer's Book of House Plants by Stanley B. Whitehead is a new title in the popular Observer Pocket Series, published by Frederick Warne & Co. at 50p. It describes 150 types of plants selected from the author's Book of House Plants and portrayed in water colour by Joan Lupton. The Introduction gives comprehensive advice on choosing, planting, feeding, cleaning, propagating and caring for house plants. There are permanent house plants like Aspidistra, known to our Victorian forbears as the Parlour Palm and to Americans as the Cast Iron Plant, and Sanseveria, irreverently called Mother- in-law's Tongue, and there are temporary house plants like Hyacinth and Cineraria, and perennial plants that become house plants during their flowering periods. A handy little book for those who want to know about the things that grow indoors. British Landscapes through Maps The Fishguard and Pembroke Area is a description of the O.S. One-inch Sheet 138/151 by Brian S. John, formerly of Haverfordwest, now lecturer in Geography at Durham University. Dr. John gives the geological background to the physical landscape, a subject which he touched upon in his Glaciation and the West Wales Landscape in Nature in Wales, 12, 138-155. He then describes the impact of man upon the natural landscape, from the earliest known human occupation, through the age of the saints and the Anglo-Norman period, down to modem times and to the county's most recent economic activities, arising from holiday development and the rediscovery of Milford Haven. He reminds us that it is only a