Released August 6, 2008

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The National Book Festival is going on in Washington, D.C. Authors from across the nation are having their books featured in the Pavilion of the States. Some 85,000 people are in attendance. The book featured by the sunflower state is a book on Kansas wildflowers and grasses, and it’s written by an author from rural Kansas.

Mike Haddock is the author of the book Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas - A Field Guide. Mike grew up in Beloit. His father, Dean is a former ag teacher and one of the first bank agricultural representatives in the state of Kansas.

The Haddocks had a 2,200 acre farm near the rural community of Minneapolis, Kansas, population 2,061 people. Now, that’s rural.

Mike says, “As a kid, I went with my dad to check cattle in the pastures. He would point out plants as we went and talk about how to identify them and what they were for.”

When Mike’s father had him chew on the root of an echinacea plant, it numbed his mouth like a trip to the dentist. Dean explained how the Indians used this root to treat toothaches, and it had an impact on Mike. That interest in plants would come to the surface years later.

Meanwhile, Mike studied in Austria and Germany as a foreign exchange student and came back to K-State. After graduation he managed the family farm for seven years before returning to graduate school to study library science. He became agriculture librarian at Texas A&M University and then joined the KSU faculty as ag librarian in 1989. Currently he is Chair of the Sciences Department for K-State Libraries.

As a Kansas ag librarian in the mid-1990s, Mike started cataloguing and describing uses for native Kansas plants. He decided to create a web site covering wildflower and grass species found in Kansas. Mike started taking pictures at the Konza Prairie Biological Research Station near Manhattan and then the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County. Before long he had covered the whole state and had sample photos of hundreds of species on the web site.

One day in 2002, Mike was attending a pasture management tour with Walter Fick, a range management professor at K-State. Walt told Mike that the web site was great and he used it all the time, but he couldn’t lug his computer out into the field to access it. Walt said, “Have you ever thought about doing a book?”

That was the beginning. Mike developed a proposal for a book with photos and descriptions of Kansas plants, and that proposal was eventually accepted by the University Press of Kansas. An interesting point came about when the publisher asked for “slides and negatives” of the pictures. Mike had to email back that he had no slides and negatives – the photos were all digital.

This was new ground for the book publisher so he had some concerns. But in the end, the book was gorgeous. It was the first book produced by the University Press of Kansas using digital four-color art, and clearly paved the way for others.

In 2005, the book Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas - A Field Guide was published. The 375-page book features descriptions of Kansas plants and 325 color photos.

The publisher estimated that the first printing would last nine years, but in only three years they are already talking about reprinting.

This work was named a Kansas Notable Book in 2006. It is available from local bookstores as well as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.

Meanwhile, Mike has continued to refine and expand the web site. That site, which began with 40 species of flowers in the first year, now includes 552 species and nearly 2,700 photos. The web address is http://www.kswildflower.org.

Mike says, “I’ve developed a deep love for the varied landscapes of our state.”

It’s time to leave the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., where this book on wildflowers and grasses has been featured. We salute Mike Haddock for making a difference with this tremendous, pioneering reference work. His book can help anyone in rural Kansas stop and appreciate the flowers along the way.

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http://isis.oznet.ksu.edu/KSRENews/story/KSProfileMikeHaddock080608.aspx

Contact: Ron Wilson, rwilson@oznet.ksu.edu