The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 143

kook /Reviews
Roadside Flowers of Texas. Paintings by Mary Motz Wills; text
by Howard S. Irwin. Austin (The University of Texas Press),
1961. Pp. XIII+295, incl. 64 color plates; explanatory notes;
identification keys; glossary, with pertinent illustrative line
drawings; index (a) to common names and (b) to scientific
names. $5.75.
Just published by the University of Texas Press is a set of 64
beautiful plates portraying in color "257 of the loveliest and most
prevalent species" to be found in the State, chosen from among
the "more than 2,ooo wild flower paintings" by Mary Motz Wills,
eminent artist and wild flower enthusiast. Appropriate text is by
Howard S. Irwin, formerly associated with the University of
Texas, Department of Botany, and presently on the staff of the
New York Botanical Garden.
Most attractive in its quiet elegance, and highly meritorious in
the clearly authoritative presentation of scientific textual matter
in language understandable to the intelligent lay reader, this
book will fill a long-felt need. Its excellence, in the judgment of
those who chart the course of the University of Texas Press pub-
lications program, merited its selection as the first in the Elma
Dill Russell Spencer Foundation Series, set up and provided for
by a gift from Mrs. Richard French Spencer of San Antonio. It
is to be fervently hoped that the high merit of this first number
will prove to be a true augury of the future of the series. Arrange-
ment is appropriate. The 64 plates, each with 4 (5, not infre-
quently; 6, twice and 7, once) named species are placed together
in the front of the book. (Just how the number of species was
found to be 257 is unclear. Four on each plate would be 256,
and an extra one, credited to one plate only, would make 257;
but it is difficult to see why the other equally prominent named
species were omitted. A careful count of extra species illustrated
and named on the plates netted 16, which added to the 256 make
272. In addition there are 2 named varieties.)
Following the plates is a key (p. 66 ff.) for determining the