Plants and Trees Books

This pamphlet was not what I expected. The paper quality is good, and the pamphlet would be good to carry along to identify plants. However, I expected it to tell me when plants would be blooming and in what type of environment they would be found. This fold-out pamphlet has excellent pictures and name identification, but not the information I expected when I purchased it.

I was disappointed to receive this "book" only to find out that it is just a fold out pamplet...I returned it and was promptly reimbursed.

This 40 page book is fairly informative but more of a pamphlet than anything else. It looks like it was printed on an office laser printer and stapled together with a cover printed at Kinko's. This book is certainly not worth it and I assume much of this info could be found in encyclopedias at your local library. Best to stay away from this one until it grows up a bit.

These kits are a waste of time and money. If you want to start with bonsai. Buy one of the beginning bonsai books offered by amazon. Harry Tomlinson's book is a good start. Then...go to your local nursery and buy a few inexpensive potted shrubs -- far better material then you could ever achieve with the seeds in this kit, and saves you about ten years of work and wait. Please do not support the charlatan peddlers of these little rip off kits.

I was very excited to get this book. Pretty pictures and good discriptions of plants.
Unfortunately, almost everything is zoned 7-8. Many of these plants grow all the way to zone 3 and they are still listed zone 7-8.
Maybe I missed something and they rezoned the United States and we only have two zones now!

I have read this book. The author seems to lack of experience. Although the author has experience in the developing country for many years, but the contents of the book are not a scientific writen. I hope he can improve and write better than that.

Thanks

I purchased this book to learn about how to prune my fruit trees. While I have an upright peach, this book tells how to train a peach tree as an espalier. Even those directions were not as good as the ones in The Complete Book of Topiary by Barbara Gallup and Deborah Reich. I also have an upright apple tree. He only talks about how to prune a bush apple. I have never heard of a bush apple. The book costs $9.95 and would cost $3.99 plus postage to return.

This book would be perfect material for a classroom of 8 year olds, but being an adult, I found it quite lacking in succinct information.

The illustrations in this book are not the same woodcut type illustrations typical in other books in this series. If you are looking for a good picture of a tree, I suggest you look elsewhere.

The book does contain Latin names for plants pictured, though, if this is helpful to you.

I was surprised to find that this book had basically no practical information about either trees or their shapes. While the pictures of trees would have had artistic value if they been published in a better way, they were faded and difficult to enjoy - a common fate of photography books of it's age. Perhaps I should have known by the "Focus" in the title that it wasn't a book about horticulture but, sadly, it was not descriptive enough.

I am very disappointed in this book.

From the Introduction: "Common names for plants can be misleading and do not always distinguish among the species. Additionally a plant known by a common name in one region may have another common name elsewhere, leading to further confusion. However, common names have been retained because they are generally of more interest." Then the book presents the plants alphabetically by common name. Of course this presumes that I even *know* common names for plants I know by botanical nomenclature.

Clearly I was wearing botany blinders when I read the description, saw, "an essential guide for botanists" and thought it might be a good addition to my library. It should be called "Eating the Plants of the Sierra" because it is all about the ethno botany, hardly bothering to offer more than a few one-line descriptions of a "key characteristic" to help you realize that out of a particular group of related plants, some are edible, some are not.

It's ironic that Amazon is pairing this book with Weedon's "Sierra Nevada Flora"; while "Wild Plants" acknowledges that "various keys are adapted from several sources, including ...Weedon.", what the book does NOT report is that there are direct remarks in "Wild Plants" that are almost identical to remarks made by Weedon; about Snowplant (Sarcodes sanguinea): Weedon says, "Stalks edible when cooked like asparagus; however this plant is rare and protected by law."; "Wild Plants" says: This fleshy plant is edible when prepared like asparagus. However, this is a protected and rare plant..." adding that you should only eat one in a emergency! I'm still trying to imagine being stuck in a bad situation with only my stove, a steamer and some hollandaise!

IF your primary interest is in learning about native uses of plants, this might be a better book than I realize. Aside from just about everything seeming to be a cure for toothaches or some sort of bleeding, I also learned this "Interesting fact: Small-flowered collinsia was used to make a horse run fast and was used externally for sore flesh." So I guess if you are on a slow horse, bleeding, and happen to ride by some small-flowered collinsia (and recognize it), you are going to be in luck.

Ready to snack on something from the carrot family? Cautiously go through the ways to prepare delicious Lomatium ("Caution: SOME species were too resinous to enjoy") but don't stop short of reading about Poison Hemlock (described but not illustrated) which is described as "a painless way to die!"

The book actually mentions that some plants are rare, then goes on to suggest that if you want to try eating them you should do so with moderation. "If you decide to harvest plants, it is important to harvest them with wisdom and respect."

Bottom line: this book, with misspelled plant names (a few found so far), minimal identification information, and that odd common-name thing, is not worth $40 unless you are a pharmacist.