Snowmass Village Wild at Heart, 2nd A Field Guide to Plants, Birds & Mammals of Snowmass/Aspen and the Colorado Rocky Mountains

by Huggins, Janis Lindsey

• ISBN13: 9781882426317
• ISBN10: 1882426312
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: People's Press

Summary

Colorado's 2005 Non-fiction Book of the Year - awarded by Colorado Humanities and the Colorado Center for the Book. This unique, all-in-one guidebook contains 670 beautiful color photos and covers 423 plants, 112 birds and 49 mammals of the wilderness areas in Central Colorado surrounding Snowmass Village and Aspen, Colorado. The content includes edible, medicinal, wildlife and gardening uses of plants, conservation status of birds and animals, tracking notes, and the ecology of various local life zones.

Author Biography

Janis Lindsey Huggins' passion for plants and the natural world has been a driving force in her life as long as she can remember. She moved to the Aspen/Snowmass area in 1970, and has spent more than 30 years exploring the local plants, wildlife and ecosystems. For many years, she has guided naturalist tours, worked as a freelance botanist and taught others in sports such as alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and windsurfing. Janis currently works as a field plant technician for Colorado State University. She hopes that readers of this field guide will be inspired to look at the landscape through new eyes, to cherish the fascinating species with which we share our surroundings, and to seek new ways to secure the future of those species as they are a part of the matrix that enriches life.

Excerpts

An immersion into the plant kingdom reveals a world of wonder brimming with intricate design, vivid color, fantastic form and heady fragrance - from the tiniest moss to the tallest tree beneath the "azure dome" of the mountain sky.

Snowmass Village and the upper Roaring Fork Valley are the perfect places to learn about mountain plants in their nautral setting. With such a variety of plant communities to choose from, the possibility for becoming acquainted with new plants is almost endless!

Prepare to indulge your senses. Take along a magnifying hand lens to examine the tiniest parts of a flower, perhaps sparkling golden pollen spilling from the ruby anthers of brook saxifrage. Inhale the heady sweetness of stemless evening-primrose or the spicy scent of crushed sagebrush leaves. Relish the texture of fuzzy mullein foliage or prickly borage fruit against your skin.