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Wild Flowers of Britain: Month by Month Spiral-Bound | September 1, 2016

Margaret Erskine Wilson

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Margaret Erskine Wilson, late President of Kendal Natural History Society, was a keen amateur botanist and water-colourist. In 1999, she donated to the Society 150 sheets of water-colour paintings representing a thousand British and Irish plants in flower and in fruit, painted in situ over many years and in various places.

At the time she donated the paintings to Kendal Natural History Society, she wrote:
Begun in 1943/4 for a friend who said, 'I might learn the names of flowers if you drew them for me, in the months they're in flower'!

The result is this beautiful, previously unpublished book of all her accurate and informative illustrations, painted over a period of 45 years.

Over a thousand British and Irish flowers are represented in this book and it still today serves Margaret Erskine Wilson's original purpose — it is an easy way to learn the names of our delicate and beautiful wild flowers.
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 176 pages
ISBN-10: 1910723312
Item Weight: 0.8 lbs
Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 6.5 inches
Customer Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars Up to 30 ratings
Margaret Erskine Wilson was born in 1915, and won a scholarship to Girton College Cambridge to study modern languages. She then studied Textile Design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, until the war broke out in 1939. She found her vocation as a teacher in Somerset and in 1954 moved to work at Kendal Girls High School, ending her career as Head of Modern Languages there. An enthusiastic member of Kendal Natural History Society, and its President in 2007, she exhibited her paintings at the Royal Horticultural Society's Botanical Art Show in London, and won silver medals on at least two occasions. During the school summer holidays Margaret travelled widely and her paintings from that time include flowers from Afghanistan, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Crete. She visited her brother in New York State, USA, and painted flowers she found there. She enjoyed summer walking in the Swiss, Italian and French Alps, and delighted in the alpine flowers. She died in 2009 and donated many of her paintings of wild flowers to the Kendal Natural History Society.