Flower Watching with Alice Eastwood

This is a fabulous book that would be of interest to anyone ages 6 years old to adult. This book is perfect for Charlotte Mason, any other home school curriculum or for those interested in the study of plants. Alice Eastwood was born in 1859. At age 6, her mother died and she was sent to live for a time with her uncle who encouraged her early interest in Botany. During her teen years she moved to Colorado where she eventually graduated and became a school teacher. During summers and any spare moments she spent her time "surrounded by fields and pastures immersing in her true passion--flowers", engaging in rugged hikes and camping expeditions. She was completely self taught but she eventually became The expert on flowers in Colorado at a time when little was known about plants in the Rockies. In 1892 she eventually moved to San Francisco to be a joint curator of the herbarium at the California Academy of Sciences, where she continued her plant explorations and journal writing. In 1906 she made a daring and exciting rescue attempt as she tried to save some of the herbarium's collection after the great earthquake shook the city and badly damaged the building that housed plants from all over the world and Alice's lifetime collection's of plants and journals. She spent the later part of her life trying to preserve the last groves of Redwood trees and buying up land for arboretums and nature preserves creating living museums. She lived into her nineties and continued her work, only now she was international recognized as one of the great botanists of the United States. Surprisingly, although it mentions that women typically did not engage in rugged activities during the time period that Alice lived, it does not contain the typical feminist or environmentalist dogma. This book is not only a wonderful biography, but has many beautiful illustrations and includes ideas scattered throughout the book to encourage young naturalists to do their own plant studies. The book is in a series called Naturalist's Apprentice Series.