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Overview
In her introduction to Mountain Flowers of New Zealand, Adams provides beautiful descriptions of several alpine locations around the country – including the Tararua Range, Tongariro, Taranaki, and Fiordland National Park – and suggests where and when mountain flowers might be found in these areas. She encourages readers to explore these ecosystems with care and admiration:
Please remember that in many places the mountain plants are protected and are not to be gathered. To sketch or photograph them is a pleasurable way of recording their beauty.
The 32 watercolour illustrations and 17 drawings in this book are accompanied by rich and engaging text describing the flowers’ colour variations, habitat preferences, seasonal growth patterns, and how they may have gotten their common names. These descriptions evoke both the precise scientific accuracy and the warm, whimsical accessibility that was also the hallmark of Adams’ illustrative style.
This pencil drawing was published on page 28 in Mountain Flowers of New Zealand, illustrating mountain coprosmas. This illustration depicts the Coprosma pseudocuneata. Adams describes the species:
Comprosma pseudocuneata – a sub alpine shrub with bright orange fruits.… New Zealand has many species of coprosma that are abundant and widespread. They grow in forests, on desolate windswept coasts, hillsides, riverbeds, and in boggy places. Those from the mountains are often unremarkable twiggy shrubs that are transformed in autumn by brilliant-coloured berries like glass beads that may be white, blue, indigo, crimson, orange, yellow, or pink.