Plants and Trees Books

This is a really great book. It explains way more then you would expect for a field guide. It goes in depth about each plant, animals that depend on them and other interesting tidbits that you wont find in any other guide. The awsome illustrations are done so beautifully and true to life no one should have any problems idtentifying plants on the trail. They also truly give this book a nice touch. It's like a book of old documenting new discoveries!

The authors' love of nature and years of experience clearly show in this unique field guide. Most books have an encyclopedic and repetitive approach. In contrast, this book looks at the individual plants and how they fit into the entire ecosystem ranging from companion plants, and dependent bird, mammal, and insect species. I have not seen another book that describes eastern wetlands in as much detail and yet still be highly readable.

For those people who already kind of know their way around the forest, and are more interested in what they are going to see ASSOCIATED with the plants they see than what an Audobon book says, this is a naturalist's dream come true!

Great b/w illustrations of not only leaves and fruits, but insects, diseases, toothmarks, clawmarks and nests that can be found on and around the trees and plants listed in the book...

Also highly recommended is the Forest and Thicket book by the same authors...

This is a must have book if you live in areas with swamps/bogs. Its so accurate I'm just amazed. It is also very easy to use. It has drawings and it talks not only about id of the plants but also their "lifestyle" (e.g. how they reproduce, various ideosyncasies of the plants, insects that are associated etc.) Each plant also has a short section on lore which adds a nice bit of history. I really like the book

This is another incredibly beautiful (both the text and the photos) book by Cachuma Press (this review refers to the 1st Edition hardbound copy)!

Anyone living in California or interested otherwise in native conifers, has to have both this book and Ronald Lanner's "Conifers of California".

Each of these books is a remarkable gem, and you will never loan either one out to friends, though you will recommend both to your friends and family.

The paperback version of each is cheaper, slightly, but I think it's well worth getting the hard bound of each book. The binding will hold up much better, trust me. You can buy one paperback copy of each from one of Amazon's outside sellers, used or new, and loan that copy out to your friends, LOL.

Also, check out Ronald Lanner's review here on Amazon, of this Coast Redwood book. He is right-on, regarding how beautiful the book is, but he forgets to mention that his own "Conifers of California" is equally fantastic!

Cachuma Press has done it again, as they did with their book on California Oaks, and with Mr. Lanner's book on conifers...they deserve all the praise they receive!

Novices and academics alike will want copies for their libraries.

This is the first contemporary book that outlines the complete natural and cultural history of the world's tallest tree the Coast Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. This book makes the most up-to-date scientific information about the trees, their ecology and associated wildlife, accessible and exciting to ordinary folks.

The authors tell the story of these remarkable trees, their logging, the emotions they have inspired, as well as the past- and present-day battles to preserve these forests in an easy to read, balanced manner.

Coast redwood is the world's tallest tree. It is also one of the most useful,rapidly producing enormous volumes of high-grade timber that satisfies many of man's structural and esthetic needs. It grows in very wet habitats that support high biodiversity. And the land it grows on is often fragile and easily eroded with disastrous consequences. For these reasons, and some others, the management and conservation of coast redwood has for well over a century been a focus of popular passions and public policies. From the fraudulent land-grabs of the Timber and Stone Act days to the tree-sit of Julia Butterfly Hill, this valuable and beautiful tree has excited those who would destroy it,those who would preserve it, and those who would use it sustainably.Coast redwood is also a botanical curiosity, from its hexaploid genome to its clonal habit; and much has been learned of its paleohistory. Finally, it is probably the tree that is known of by more people than any other, famous almost everywhere in the world. It is not surprising that much ink has been spilled over the years because of this tree. It has probably inspired the writing of more books than any other woody species, and the publication of more pretty pictures. Unfortunately, most of those books were written when little was known of the science of redwood; or when environmental photography had few practitioners; or by authors who knew a good sales opportunity but had little knowledge of their subject. Well, finally a redwood book has emerged that has the facts to match its utterly stunning pictorials. Though team-written by six authors, its expertise is unquestioned, and its smooth editing lets you glide without bumps from one topic to another. And the topics are comprehensive: origins and distribution, life history, ecology, wildlife, harvest and utilization, history of preservation, and conservation and management. Before writing this review I focused mainly on the biology, and found it nearly impeccable, and far more detailed than what is available elsewhere. But I found myself frequently turning pages to admire the color photos, or the nineteenth century black-and-whites, or the fascinating sidebars on a wide variety of subjects. So maybe I missed an overstatement, or even a blunder somewhere. Maybe. But since this is hands-down the most sumptously illustrated, factually rich monograph of any single tree species ever written for a popular and professional readership, I can only recommend you buy it. But only if you have an interest in forestry, botany, the environment, conservation, history, or wildlife. And if you think you can keep friends and family members from snatching it when your back is turned.

This is a wonderful book on the magnificent redwoods and is a great read. It covers the ancient history and scientific aspects of the redwood forest as well as the cultural history from the glutinous, pillaging past to the environmental inspiration and discoveries that may help save some small remnant of this tiny but magestic portion of our planet.

In addition, the photos are not a publishers quick picks of stock photos to fill the book, but are high resolution photo art from great photographers. I recently moved to the Mendocino area and wanted to get up to speed on the area that has fascinated me so much. This book was the perfect choice.

I recently used this book for an indepedent study on Canopy Ecology and found it abosutley indispensible. Lowman and Nadkarni used the work of such big name scientists as Nigel Stork and Terry Erwin to assemble an array of canopy topics including access, structure, nutrient cycling, species compossition, epihyte and hemiephyte ecology, and even ethnobotany. Each chapter is clear cut and informative and the book does not waste space with cheesy fru-fru. Of particular interest to the aspiring canopy researcher is the suggestions for new avenues of research given at the end of almost every chapter.

The most comprehensive book on the subject to date. This book takes you into a world where few have been before, the forest canopy! A cutting edge book for a cutting edge field!

One of best synopsis of the current to near current canopy research topics, struggles, and future agendas! Lowman and Nadkarni continue to out do themselves with this suberbly edited book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in forest ecology and forest canopies who aren't afraid to look at some graphs. You'll learn something....

I recently used this book for an indepedent study on Canopy Ecology and found it abosutley indispensible. Lowman and Nadkarni used the work of such big name scientists as Nigel Stork and Terry Erwin to assemble an array of canopy topics including access, structure, nutrient cycling, species compossition, epihyte and hemiephyte ecology, and even ethnobotany. Each chapter is clear cut and informative and the book does not waste space with cheesy fru-fru. Of particular interest to the aspiring canopy researcher is the suggestions for new avenues of research given at the end of almost every chapter.

This book rocks! It inspires as well as informs! The line drawings are especially amazing. Van Pelt selects specific angles for each drawing, such that he captures the unique qualities of each individual tree. These renderings are beautiful and accurate. Each one can be studied for hours. The photographs could have been a bit more creative, but he follows an effective strategy by showing a human in most pictures. This allows the reader to understand the immense size of these giants. The text provides an excellent natural history, conveying to the reader an intertwined tale of ecology, history, and discovery. Lastly, I was especially impressed with the fact that Van Pelt included so many tree species and individuals. By doing this he has allowed us to truly appreciate the diversity, beauty and uniqueness of these amazing trees.

This is an awesome book of personal accounts, illustrations, and photographs of magnificent individuals of Pacific coast conifers. Van Pelt knows these trees like no one else, having journied to, measured, and stood in awe at each of the giants depicted. His writes with witty reverence and from a deep understanding of the ecology of giant trees. Featured in the book are the author's beautiful line drawings of the trees, which capture the amazing structural complexity of their crowns in a way not possible with photographs. This book is a must for all tree lovers and those interested in coffee table adventuring into the last great forests of the Pacific coast.

This is a must see, must read book about "Forest Giants." If I had the loot to RV this would be a road map to follow. As a nurseryman I appreciated the detailed information about each species, the beautiful handrawn representatives of each major tree of the group -- be it Incense Ceder, Fir, Spruce etc.

Despite 35 plus years in horticulture, this book had much I could learn from. It is wonderfully written and illustrated.

I cannot think of no better book I could have gifted myself for my Christmas yet to come.

Secateur

This book affects people deeply. Certainly it did me. It is a simple and absolutely passionately beautiful account of giant trees, how they're discovered, how they're measured. Van Pelt's drawings are amazing. I think this book is a classic and I think it will live in print for many, many years.

Excellent book containing the lineage and qualities of many fruits, nuts and berries. A great reference book for any enthusiast. Used by many retailers as a guide for their products.

Thanks to this wonderful book, we have added many unusual fruits to our orchard and discovered some amazing mail order suppliers. Before we purchase any plants, we always refer to "THE BOOK" to make sure that the tree is one we really want and that it will thrive in the harsh Maine climate. I would recommend it to anybody wanting to successfully plant fruits, berries or nuts.

For the fruit nut, this reference is indispensible. When ordering specific varieties, we use it to source stock from nurseries. When searching for trees with certain characteristics, we peruse the descriptions, hunting for certain words (in the pear section, "fireblight-resistant", in the apricot section, "excellent flavor", etc.).
Few complaints: not revised often enough to list new varieties as they come on the market. For example, 'Goldrush' apple is not listed. Descriptions are very brief, probably due to space limitations. Descriptions are also generally a summary of the nursery catalog's text, and therefore not as useful as they could be.
In general, a very fun reference to keep on the shelf.

In the third edition of this excellent reference, the Seed Savers Exchange has provided a very useful tool for nurseries and gardeners to locate sources of heirloom fruit, nut and berry varieties. But it is much more than just a sourcebook, as there are brief descriptions of each fruit variety and indications of how rare or threatened each variety is based on the number of sources. Nursery operators and fruit gene bank managers will find this book to be indespensible!

This is a great book with lots of details. It is a very good reference book.

I have had this book for a few years now and used it extensively. I am in north central Iowa, zone 4, and this book has helped me to choose shrubs and small trees that can withstand my extremely bitter cold winters. What I love about this book is there are many photos, many nursery resources listed, and it is full of very valuable information.

If you are gardening/landscaping in a cold climate and need to know which cultivar's can survive in zone 4 or 3 or 2 then you need to have this book.

This book has been more helpful to us in many different areas. It explains everything from how and when to prune to how and when to fertilize. It shows both common name and scientific name in the table of contents to quickly find what you're looking for. If you are looking for a book that explains how to take care of everything available in the cold northeast, this is the book for you. Gardeners can't go wrong with this book.

How wonderful to have a book that provides the level of detail made available here for those of us who shiver through our winters and worry about whether the new additions to the garden are as hardy as the garden center promised.

The details? Everything from pronunciation to names of various suppliers. How to plant, feed and prune and informed odds about whether a particular plant will survive transplanting. Plants aren't merely promised to be hardy; charts give the specific temperature to which varieties will survive. The charts also show information about flower color and fruit, the plant's anticipated size, and comments about the variety's assets and liabilities for the home gardener.

Photographs are large enough to show detail and convey actual information: aspects of a particular plant or its appearance in different seasons, and variables among varieties.

This is a fine book and, in my view, unusual in that it is certainly well worth its sticker price. It is organized like an encyclopedia, notwithstanding some useful material in chapters outside the alphabetized plant list. As such, it does not have an index -- which might be useful -- and some of the text can be recursive. But these are minor flaws in an outstandingly useful and beautifully published book.

This is a wonderful book that provides more pictures than text. It was just perfect, showing close up pictures of the leaves, seeds, fruit, branches and trunks for the different seasons. The pictures assist with the identification of the species (or subspecies). The pictures are full gloss on a high quality paper.

Enjoyed this book. Look forward to other plant books by this author. Especially if he does Viburnums as stated on the flap of the Maple book.

The Timber Press has been putting out lavishly printed volumes (full color on glossy paper) for awhile now. With this book they appear to have lifted the publishing of fine books to a new level. They not only found a group of people dedicated to their subject and to fine photography who captured the saillant features in almost invariably excellent pictures, but also managed to find a layout to do these pictures full justice. Basically (almost) every maple species (or subspecies) has two pages devoted to it (or a multiple of that): a page of text and a page of pictures. Where more pages are devoted to a single maple sometimes a full page is devoted to a single picture, but this is the exception. Usually there are several pictures per page with large pictures of habit and smaller pictures of detail. The effect is quite splendid. A quick browse through the text reveals nothing out of place, with a recent classification being followed, although I suspect that a really close look will show up nitpickingly small errors. All in all this is really magnificent maple book, with a considerable wow!-factor.

THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO MAPLES is far more than the definitive book on all of the 250 species of this favorite tree for all seasons. It stands solidly as an art book for environmentalists, arborists, and lovers of color photography.

In his Introduction Antoine Le Hardy De Beaulieu presents a warmly written history of the maple trees, with special attention to the areas of the world where this ubiquitous genus appears. Then follows a beautifully organized guide to each of the many species, with not only lush color photographs of the trees in the environment but also with close up views of specifics that assist the gardener in identifying each tree. Then at the end of this large volume considerable space is devoted to landscape placements of these magnificent trees that not only offer suggestions to planners, but also can be viewed as fine art photography. Highly Recommended volume. Grady Harp, January 2005

I picked up this book thinking that I should have it in my library but not much more. I was soon captivated by its lovely figures and pictures and by its insightful discussions of ALL the various aspects of the oak. I'm not a botanist or even an ecologist, and this book is not just for oak-wonks or something. On the other hand, I just gave my copy to the resident scientist at a local oak preserve (in the hills above San Diego) and so here I am back to buy yet another copy for my library. Highly recommended.

This is an outstanding piece of work that may be a bit too technical in parts for some readers. I know it was for me as a neophyte botanist. I may read this again when I've gained more experience because Glenn Keator's in-depth look at oak trees worldwide is as exhaustive as any popular book I've seen, and the artwork by Susan Bazell is wonderful.

Glenn Keator begins with "Oak Architecture," by which he means the nature of the roots, trunk, limbs, branches, leaves, etc. of the tree including epiphytes and the tree itself as an ecosystem. The mighty oak is indeed quite an ecosystem, nourishing many creatures and being nourished itself not only by water, air, sun and soil, but through a mycorrhizal relationship with fungi. Next he goes into the life cycle of the trees from acorn to death to being recycled by nature. The diversity and the evolution of oaks is explored to some considerable depth, and finally there is look at the various habitats that oaks are part of.

I am familiar with the oaks of California, but it was interesting to read about oaks from all parts of the world including those of the high lands of northern Mexico where there is the greatest diversity. Interesting too are the oaks of the tropical rain forests which have evolved differing techniques for survival. Keator reports on the prehistory of the oak and how it has evolved globally beginning at least 40 million years ago.

The most interesting part of the book for me covered the many different kinds of galls that live on these endlessly fascinating trees. Most of us are familiar with the potato and apple shaped galls but how about the rose-colored urchin gall or the mushroom gall or the jumping gall? I had brought some leaves home with what looked like rose-purple colored flowers, each about a quarter inch in diameter, growing on the underside of some leaves, and I wondered what they were. I was surprised to learn that they are but one of many galls that the chemistry of insects incites the oak to grow. Bazell's drawings of the galls on pages 88, 89 and 91 are beautiful and instructive. To me, the presence of so many kinds of galls, which are really ancient adaptations to living with insects, testifies to the great antiquity of the oaks themselves.

I had hoped this book would help me identify oak trees by species--and in the long run it may. But for now what I've learned is that the promiscuous oak, pollinated by the wind, morphs into hybrids that are difficult to identify. Not only that, but what is even more confusing, the oak tree shapes its leaves differently depending on the climate and even on which side of the oak the leaves grow. Furthermore, even though some oaks are named because of the color of their bark, that doesn't always aid identification since the bark is often covered by lichen and mosses. It helps to know that some oaks are deciduous and some are evergreen, and that the acorns themselves are a good key to identification. However the flowering parts of oaks are small and their season is brief, ensuring that those who seek positive identification will have to do some serious fieldwork.

In addition to information about oaks, Keator writes about the other kinds of plants that coexist in oak habitats--flowers, fungi, insects, and other trees, especially beeches.

Complementing Bazell's artwork are full color photos and maps showing the habitats and the global distribution of oaks and similar trees, and there is an excellent glossary. I suspect most people with a spirited interest in oak trees own or are familiar with this excellent book.

I enjoyed this book because it was complete and had much up-to-date information. Many botancial texts are often out-of-date by the time they have been in print for a time, so it was nice to find soch good, up-to-date material. It's also well written. It's actually a fun read about oaks. Good pictures also. AFter reading this book, whether you are an expect or just a fan, you'll never pass an oak without a much deeper understanding and appreciation of what a unique plant it is.

I bought this book for my father who is developing an oak park. He has an insatiable appetite for books, especially those on oaks, he loved it and said it was the best book on oaks he'd ever read...

This is my absolute favorite children's book. My twins are 22years old and of all their books this is the one they remember. The illustrations are beautiful!! I have purchased this book for many friends children and the reaction is the same.beautiful

What a beautiful, rich book! I can't believe I've never seen this book before a friend passed it along. Besides magnetizing illustrations, the whole story concept of the cycle of life is sensitive and calming. I as an adult find myself reading and pouring over it again and again. My 4 year old liked it at age 4 and now loves it more than ever. I also like that it was originally written and published in the "Soviet Union" so the perspective is a little different than the usual American fare.

This book was read read to me throughout my childhood, so i am saddened to see such a short synopsis. Granted that is the essence of the story, but what is most important about it, is the sense of interconnectedness in nature that Nathalia illustrates. Many different organisms live in a less glamorous way and often go underappreciated in environmental texts. It's about time that bugs and worms had their say, too. I thoroughly recommend it.

What a beautiful, rich book! I can't believe I've never seen this book before a friend passed it along. Besides magnetizing illustrations, the whole story concept of the cycle of life is sensitive and calming. I as an adult find myself reading and pouring over it again and again. My 4 year old liked it at age 4 and now loves it more than ever. I also like that it was originally written and published in the "Soviet Union" so the perspective is a little different than the usual American fare.

This book is still the best available for the Western Great Lakes region. Very informative and detailed. The distribution maps are most helpful in attempting to locate the general area to find these beauties. Fred's affection with wild orchids shows in the quality of this publication. I would also suggest his newer book on Trilliums.

A great guide to Midwestern orchids. Fred knows and loves our native orchids and their habitats, and succeeds in communicating that knowledge and love to the reader. Plenty of great photos of orchids and the places in which they grow.

Orchids of the Western Great Lakes Region goes with me on all my Spring and Summer outings. It is written clearly, sensibly, and with a good balance between the sciences and pure enjoyment. The native orchid photos are fantastic.

This book is extremely useful, especially as a companion to Voss's Michigan Flora and wildflower books covering the Eastern U.S. The photos, although dated, are good. What is especially good about this book, though, is the accurate and descriptive list of habitats that occur in the region, complete with the orchids someone searching the area could find in the habitat. Distribution maps are also included.