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The result is this beautiful, previously-unpublished little book of all her accurate and informative illustrations, painted over a period of 45 years.

This book today still serves Margaret’s original purpose in that it is indeed an attractive way to learn the names of our delicate and beautiful wild flowers.