Michigan Trees
/ March 05, 2010Burton V. Barnes and Warren H. Wagner Jr..
This is one of the best tree ID guides I have seen. It is so good that it is a standard reference in the states on all sides of Michigan, and beyond. The images (line drawings) are among the best for tree ID that I’ve seen anywhere. (For those obsessed with ID through color photos, trust me, getting over this crutch will be the best thing you can possibly do for yourself in terms of learning plants). I highly recommend this book to anyone in the Northeastern US.
Plants of the Black Hills and Bear Lodge Mountains
/ March 05, 2010Gary Larson and James Johnson, 2007. SD State University.
This is a large book with excellent color photos. It is by no means inclusive of all the plants in its region (a book of this type can’t be), but it includes an excellent selection of the more conspicuous and common species in the region. I have found it very useful in my time there. The text is well written and packs a lot of information in a small space. Highly recommended.
Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast
/ March 05, 2010Eds. Pojar and Mackinnon, 1994. Lone Pine.
In the Pacific Northwest, this is simply the plant book. It is not inclusive of all the plants in the region, but it has a broad selection. In fact, I am continually amazed that so many species can be covered so well in one book. There are 794 species, with accurate descriptions and good (but small) photos of most. The tiny print allows a lot of text to be crammed in here. As a bonus to foragers, there is a great deal of information about the food and utilitarian uses of the plants by Native Peoples, and Nancy Turner, a top-notch expert on wild food and world-renown ethnobotanist, was involved in the project.
Any aspiring forager who lives in or visits this region should get the book. It’s awesome.
(This identical book is published under different titles, depending on region)
Shrubs of Ontario
/ March 05, 2010James H. Soper.
For the northeastern US and eastern Canada, this book is great. The keys, descriptions, and drawings are all superb. This is my favorite shrub guide.
Trees and Shrubs of Minnesota
/ March 05, 2010Welby R. Smith, 2008. University of Minnesota Press.
This book is simply fantastic. It has photographs and natural history information for those who want more than just a dichotomous key; and it has superb, technically accurate keys for the serious botanist. It excels in both aspects. The keys are detailed and more precise and clear than most other keys, and these characters are augmented in the descriptions. The book does an especially good job of differentiating difficult or commonly mistaken sets of species, such as how to tell American, showy, and European mountain-ash apart; Canada versus American plum; woodbine versus Virginia creeper, and other such groups. The treatment of difficult groups such as Amelanchier, Crataegus, and Rubus is excellent and was not taken lightly.
The photos in this book are superb and must have required enormous effort and organization to acquire. I was happy to read the author's bold statement that his pictures were taken on slide film (bold because film is routinely mocked today by photo-gearhead amateurs).
The Sibley Guide to Trees
/ March 05, 2010David Allan Sibley, 2009.
This guide seems designed to sell rather than to be useful; to be looked at rather than used. It lacks some things that it really should have.
First, as pointed out by others, it needs some kind of key system for identification.
Most importantly, this book needs more than two or three sentences per tree. The distinguishing features listed are in many cases wholly insufficient to accurately and consistently identify the species. Sibley perhaps sees trees as being as simple to identify as birds (or simpler); due to introgression, they are not. One or two features is not enough to go on. Often, very useful identification features are left out of his text. For example, in his description of rock elm, there is no mention of the growth form/tree shape, which is by far the most distinctive aspect of this tree, and the easiest way to identify it.
The selection of trees included is very odd indeed.
Identifying Trees: An All-Season Guide to Eastern North America
/ March 05, 2010Michael Williams, 2007. Stackpole Books.
I was really excited to get this book. As I read it my opinion gradually declined. While it is a useful book, I have seen much better tree books, such as Michigan Trees (for those who live in the Great Lakes or Northeast). The book only covers the larger trees, for the most part. Many of the photos are of remarkably poor quality, and they tend not to show many good identifying characteristics. The writing seems disorganized, and the text does not go into detail about reliable identifying characteristics. The ranges given are extremely general.
Most of all, I was disappointed to find the book containing errors that seem inexcusable in a guide of this type. For example, the section on slippery elm says "Slicing through the bark at a gradual angle will usually expose thin layers of white inner bark divided by the thicker reddish brown bark, as is usually found in the elms." This is totally wrong: the ABSENCE of white layers in the bark is the feature used to tell slippery elm from the other elms.
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