Edwin Lanfranco, Guido Bonett:
Wild Flowers of the Maltese Islands
BDL Ltd, 2015. 208pp

The last decade has seen the publication of several books about Maltese natural history. These works, whether serious scientific tomes aimed at students of Maltese biodiversity or more popular guidebooks for nature lovers, were produced by authors who dedicated long hours of painstaking research in order to achieve their aims.

This increase in nature-related publications coincides, whether by accident or design, with a general awakening among the local population of the wonderful diversity of living organisms with which we share these islands.

The book under review – Wild Flowers of the Maltese Islands – falls into the ‘guide-books for nature lovers’ category. In fact, at the very outset, the authors state that the book does not intend to cover all the flowering plants occurring in the Maltese islands, but to aid the nature lover in identifying “a fair proportion of the wild plants one is likely to encounter”.

The authors – botanist extraordinaire Edwin Lanfranco and nature photographer Guido Bonett – need little introduction. Their past contributions to botany and nature photography respectively have helped not a little in raising environmental awareness.

These two experts have now pooled their resources to produce an informative volume, replete with beautiful colour photography and extensive, but easy-to-understand, descriptions of over 300 of the 1,000 or so different species which occur locally.

The book kicks off with a chapter on the different habitats in which the different components of the local flora are found. Evergreen woods, maquis, garigue, dry grassland, coastal areas, wetlands, and even man-made habitats, come in for a clear, concise explanation.

This is followed by a brief section on plant nomenclature, both scientific and popular and plant classification. These introductory sections serve to help the reader in using the later sections of the guide – the descriptions, illustrated with often spellbinding photographs, of the individual flowering plants.

An informative volume, replete with beautiful colour photography and extensive descriptions

Each species is afforded a general description and one or more photographs. The English, Maltese and scientific names of the species are given together with the likely habitats in which it would occur, the flowering period and the geographical distribution.

A feature which will assist users of the book in the field is the arrangement of the plants in sections according to flower colour – white, yellow, red, violet or green. Thus, on encountering a flower in the field, one can instantly refer to the section where it is described and illustrated.

Unfortunately, this system also has its drawbacks since a number of species occur in more than one colour; others do not fit into any of the colours selected, while others might be borderline cases between two colours, especially in the case of white and green.

A useful feature is a reference to other species which are not described in the book but which resemble, or are related to, the plant in question. Some interesting facts about local flora emerge from the individual descriptions. The curiously named Italian Lords and Ladies, for example, a member of the arum family, is pollinated by minute insects while they are trapped in a modified leaf known as a spathe, gorging themselves on nectar.

As the spathe wilts, the insects escape and go on to visit and pollinate other flowers. The flowers of certain orchids resort to an even more refined method of inducing insects to pollinate them. They resemble a female bee or wasp so closely that the males are duped into attempting to couple with the faux female. In the process, they pick up the pollen which they will then carry to other flowers.

A more robust cover would have been an improvement, as I know this will be a much-thumbed book, often used in damp weather conditions. An extensive glossary, suggestions for further reading and indices of scientific, English and Maltese names complete this guide which I recommend to all those who want to widen their knowledge of the local flora by going out in the field armed with a handy identification guide.

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