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Cambridgeshire is a county of diverse lowland habitats and varied geology with a long history of botanical recording. This 1,000-page flora, one of the largest to be published in recent years, covers 2,330 species and hybrids. This is an increase of 1,072 on the last Flora published in 1964.
The main body of Flora of Cambridgeshire contains comprehensive species accounts without illustrations. The introductory chapters are illustrated and discuss topography, geology, climate, an extensive history of plant recorders in the county, and a review of gains and losses of species. Sites of botanical interest, many of national importance, are also covered, such as Chippenham Fen, Wicken Fen, the Devil's Ditch, the Ouse Washes, and the urban flora of Cambridge.
This is an essential reference for botanists, ecologists, naturalists, land owners, conservation organisations, local authorities, planners and all those with an interest in plants growing wild in this beautiful and interesting county.
Alan Leslie has been recording the Cambridgeshire flora since 1972 and was BSBI Recorder from 2005 to 2019.
"Cambridgeshire has the longest and most detailed record of wild plants of any county in Britain, and quite possibly in the world [...] Given the trend in county floras towards giantism, one might have expected a whopper this time, but this one is off the scale. It is nearly a thousand pages long, for a start, and it weighs a ton. And yet, in the main part there are no pictures and no maps, either, but just dense columns of text. Illustration is confined to the first 144 pages [...] If all that sounds a bit breathtaking (and it is), this is a perfectly readable and well-designed flora, full of exactly the sort of information that interests field botanists. It is radical both in its exclusion of the usual maps and in its depth of detail. Like some other recent floras, it forms a kind of testament: to years and years of detailed recording, to the state-of-the-art of field botany, and to a clear intention on the part of the author to leave nothing out [...]"
– Peter Marren, British Wildlife, Volume 32(1), October 2020
