Wild Flowers of Turkey: Türkiye'nin Yaban Çiçekleri Paperback – August 21, 2022

Each corner of Anatolia is dressed up with colorful flowers almost all year, particularly in the spring the valley’s and hillsides are a kaleidoscope of vibrant natural colors. Even if you have little interest in the botanical world, you can’t remain indifferent to this natural display of beauty.But here in Turkey we haven’t had, until recently, good resources if we wanted to learn about our local flora – even the valuable eleven volume book series “Flora of Turkey and East Aegean Islands” written by Prof. Davis with help and collaboration of some of our prestigious professors, is no longer in print. Under these circumstances, satisfying our curious guest’s inquiries about what they were seeing was almost impossible.During the many years that I have been touring throughout Anatolia, I have tried to answer the question of my guests about this wonderful world with the aid of books which I have gotten from Europe. But unfortunately, I had to stay silent most of the time or to defer their questions with the explanation that: “…you are touring in a country which has around 10.000 different species of plants and 1/3rd of them are unique to Turkey and unfortunately, I am not a botanist!” I have been interested in taking pictures of flowers for a long time. But I began to compile my archive of them in the spring of 2004. I toured with my car throughout Central Anatolia, the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, and the Sea of Marmara region. Also, for the past 5 years, during each round trip with my guests, (except the eastern Black Sea coast and the eastern Anatolian region,) I chased after flowers that the paintbrush of nature had used to decorate our beautiful country of Turkey. I looked excitedly after flower blossoms on each historical hillside from Bodrum to Mount Nemrut and from Troy to Antakya. When the compilation of all of my pictures was complete, and with the invaluable help and support of Mr. Erdal Uzen PhD from Istanbul Universities Department of Botanic Science identified my pictures; this book, which you hold in your hands was ready for publication.This book, which has been a labor of my love for the beauty of my Land, is designed for amateurs, nature lovers and tourists. It explains family and type of the flower in simple and easy to understand terms and helps identify the regions of Turkey where any particular species is to be found.There is absolutely no doubt that this book is unique and differentiates itself from other European references with its design and pictograms due to Omer E’s. efforts. I owe the clean design and understandability of the book to his very detailed and creative hard work so that it appeals to a large group of people regardless of their age or language.All of the information about the flowers is from a variety of sources with the most important source being the out of print series; “Flora of Turkey and East Aegean Islands”. We intentionally left some names open and used only family name of the flowers if we were not sure about the type – we hope that nature lovers who are aware of the size of Turkish flora will understand and forgive us.S. Nazan Öztürk Read more