Fully illustrated, 496 pp., it has been written by an extensive local team led by local experts. It is designed to be accessible to everybody, providing botanical walks in addition to full descriptions of all the best plants and botanical places of Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. It describes the ecology and distribution of over 1,800 flowering plants, conifers and ferns based on records from every one of the 715 one-kilometre squares which make up this area. It also provides annotated checklists of our Fungi, Lichens, Mosses and Liverworts. The history, physical background and habitats of the conurbation are described and the botanical data is analysed to shed new light on the conservation and improvement of nature.