Although it’s much closer to Ostara than Samhain, Mark Avery has clearly been spending a fair amount of time recently reading about ghosts. Not ghosts of the supernatural sort, mind you; rather the Ghost Orchid, Epipogium aphyllum Sw., as featured in the title of Peter Marren’s new book Chasing the Ghost; My Search for all the Wild Flowers of Britain from Square Peg / Penguin UK.

Mark seems to have enjoyed what he found in Marren’s book as he notes in his Sunday review of it that had the book been published when he was younger it may have very well converted him to botany. I’ll leave it to Mark to elaborate on this and a number of other points in his full review.

Links to Mark Avery’s Sunday book reviews appear in The Well-read Naturalist by special arrangement. You can find all of Mark’s past reviews as well as a wide-ranging collection of his other writings on his Standing Up for Nature website. Mark’s opinions regarding the books he reviews are his own.