Ireland's Wild Orchids. A Field Guide.

Dublin: Nicholson and Bass for the authors. 2008. 8vo. Original full light brown leather wraparound binding, in original foldout brown card box with ribbon pull, speckled edges, decorative endpapers; pp. x, 125, illustrated throughout in colour, photographs in text; with original signed watercolour by Susan Sex of common fragrant orchid bound in; fine in very good box.No. 17 of a limited edition of 850, signed by Sayers and Sex, this one of only fifty copies reserved for patrons, donors, and authors, featuring an original watercolour by Sex. This book was conceived as an affordable companion to the authors' magisterial 2004 folio volume, Ireland's Wild Orchids, described as 'one of the most beautiful books in the history of Irish botany' (Viney, 2009). In its most widely available form, the work appeared as a pocket-sized, ring-bound, waterproof field guide, with pages for the reader's own notes. This special edition departs markedly from that format, with a wraparound binding and sixteen additional pages reproducing sketches and paintings made in preparation for the folio, transforming a practical field guide into a substantially more sumptuous publication. Sex's painted studies are interspersed with photographs of orchids in the wild, while Sayers provides concise descriptions and identification keys. The resulting combination of visual and practical material was praised as 'a notable alliance of science, art and craft, and a timely tool in the current run of orchidaceous summers' (Viney). Viney, Biology and Environment: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 110B (2009).…