Wildflowers Across America is a serious treatise on the status of plants native to North America. It’s also a beautifully illustrated coffee-table book with hundreds of gorgeous photographs that will convince you that no fancy cultivar could match the glowing beauty of a field of lupinus texensis, more commonly known as Texas bluebonnets.

Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady and the most visible proponent of indigenous botany, and well-known horticulturist Carlton B. Lees take turns describing their adventures with wildflowers, the history of plant exploration, regional plants, and the landscape beautification movement that Mrs. Johnson popularized and still vigorously supports. The lovely regional portfolio in the middle of the book is particularly interesting.