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Margaret Armstrong was from the Hudson River valley of New York; she explored the West as part of an extended adventure, but never settled here.\u00a0 She traveled from 1911 to 1914, often with two or three female companions, exploring all of the states west of the Rocky Mountains and into Canada.\u00a0 She was possibly the first woman of European descent to travel to the floor of the Grand Canyon, where she found, described, and illustrated several new plant species.\u00a0 The result of these adventures was the \u201cField Book of Western Wild Flowers,\u201d published in 1915.<\/p>\n
She had considerable training as an artist and is perhaps best known amongst bibliophiles for the over 300 book covers she designed, an art form mostly lost in the 20th<\/sup> century with the development of dust jackets.\u00a0 She also wrote biographies in her 60s, and mystery novels in her 70s!\u00a0 Her schooling was in art, but she understood botany practices very well, collecting and pressing some 1,000 herbarium specimens.\u00a0 Many remain in the New York Botanical Garden herbarium.\u00a0 She lists as her co-author, John James Thornber (1872-1962), professor of botany at the University of Arizona, crediting him and many others (including Alice Eastwood and Julia Henshaw) for assuring the accuracy of her text.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it is her illustrations that make the book so appealing,\u201d according to a review by Bobbi Angell in the December 2018 issue of \u201cThe Botanical Artist.\u201d\u00a0 These included some 500 pen and ink drawings and almost 50 watercolors, all drawn or painted on site.\u00a0 While there is a glossary of terms and a short set of keys, this book relies more on its illustrations for identification than the others in this review.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Excerpted from the Winter 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Margaret Armstrong was from the Hudson River valley of New York; she explored the West as part of an extended adventure, but never settled here.\u00a0 She traveled from 1911 to 1914, often with two or three female companions, exploring all of the states west of the Rocky Mountains and into Canada.\u00a0 She was possibly the first woman of European descent to travel to the floor of the Grand Canyon, where she found, described, and illustrated several new plant species.\u00a0 The…<\/p>\n