Canadian Wild Flowers

Canadian author Catherine Parr Traill responds to what she sees as great need in her botanical novel "Canadian Wild Flowers". That is, to give a portrait of the numerous species of flowers found in Canada, and by extension North America. The preface states, "Many years ago the only work that treated in any way of the Wild Plants of Canada, the country owed to that indefatigable botanist, Frederick Pursh, whose valuable labours were but little appreciated in the country in which he toiled and died—it is to be feared but poorly rewarded during his life. The land, with all its rich vegetable resources, lay as it were an untrodden wilderness for many years, save by those hardy settlers who cared little for the forest flowers that grew in their paths. The unlettered Indians, indeed, culled a few of the herbs and barks and roots for healing purposes, and dyes wherewith to stain their squaws' basket-work and porcupine quills; and some of the old settlers had given them local and descriptive names by which they may be recognized even in the present day, but there was no one to give written descriptions, or to compile a native Flora, or even domestic Herbal of the Wild Plants of Canada. The subject seemed to excite little interest, unless in some chance traveller whom curiosity or business brought to the country. But now the schoolmaster is abroad, and better things are, we trust, in store for this our noble country…It was to supply a deficiency that has long been felt in this counter, that the Authoress first conceived the idea of writing a little volume descriptive of the most remarkable of the Wild Flowers, Shrubs and Forest Trees of Canada."