Comprehensive, profusely illustrated archive by two of the world's foremost collectors of pictorial symbols and devoted flower enthusiasts. Their pictures, rendered from rare illustrations, extend from ancient Chinese lotus buds to a basket of flowers in a nineteenth-century Valentine silhouette. The symbolic meaning of every known species, from absinth to zinnia, is summarized in a table. A visual treat for flower lovers, this essential sourcebook,...

"The most original and most powerful design art produced in the Western Hemisphere is also its most indigenous: that of the Indian, in innumerable cultures existing from prehistory to the arrival of the white man, reaching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. It owes, of course, nothing to Europe or the classical Orient. It is tremendous in variety, differing region by region, era by era, often tribe by tribe. It is always vigorously distinctive....