Paying tribute to the transcendent beauty of flowers, this book showcases 50 examples of the familiar (tulip, rose, dandelion, carnation, sunflower) and the rare (chocolate cosmos, gentian, physalis). Using an ingenious photographic process, Richard Maxted makes his portraits of such flowers as the aster, calla lily, hydrangea, delphinium, monkshood, and chrysanthemum look uncommonly vivid and three-dimensional, evoking 19th-century botanical illustrations and paintings by the Old Masters. Jane Field-Lewis notes the distinct physical features of each bloom, and describes the flower's scientific, historical, and mythological significance.