Selection of field guides to flowering plants and conifers

A comprehensive manual intended as an identification tool for foresters and as the foundation of a regional revision of the family. It includes systematic and field keys and detailed description of field characters. The leaves and fruit of all species of each genus are illustrated together to facilitate identification.

One of the best early popular photographic guides. It has thumbnail descriptions to 99 families and over 1200 species, as well as over 850 photographs, and is produced in the tough, hard-back format characteristic of Collins field-guides. There are no keys and the descriptions and photographs lack sufficient detail for accurate identification.

A well designed guidebook aimed at non-specialists, with useful guidance on identification and excellent illustrations. Anyone designing a field guide to woody plants of the seasonally dry tropics should note the provision here of keys for all of the states likely to be encountered, i.e. flowers without leaves, leaves without flowers and neither flowers nor leaves. It also provides tables listing species exhibiting particular armature, leaf gland and inflorescence type.

A herbarium reference manual. It is the only identification guide to include x-ray images of leaves and complements an interactive key on CD-ROM.

A comprehensive field guide, including vegetative keys, lists of spot characters, descriptions, maps, a checklist with synonymy of the rattans of Indochina and notes on local names, habitat, phenology, uses and cultivation. It is easy to use, well arranged and has high quality photographs and line drawings. All the inflorescence drawings are reproduced at life size, so unfortunately some are too small to see the detail clearly. English and Lao versions are available.

A field guide derived from a taxonomic monograph and incorporating full botanical illustrations by Rosemary Wise and a basic multi-access key based on the number of needles per fascicle and the size of the cones. This guide has a number of strengths including a useful discussion of identification routes and characters, the illustrated glossary and the excellent drawings. Anyone writing a field guide that includes gymnosperms should find this book instructive.

An innovative and copiously illustrated field guide, that packs information about 880 species into its compact size. It includes a dichotomous key to genera using leaf characters, a multi-access key listing 38 field characters (of trunk, crown, bark, leaves, flowers and fruit), comparative tables for families and difficult genera such as Eleocarpus and Syzygium and subkeys to genera and species. 430 main species are illustrated with a mixture of 4-7 photographs, line drawings (leaves) and paintings (flowers). The illustrations occupy two-thirds of a page so are small, but the reproduction is very good and the descriptions are very detailed for a field guide. Excellent, but more help could be given for identification in the absence of flowers and fruit.

This is one of the few vegetative keys to include field characters often considered by herbarium taxonomists to be too variable to use, e.g. leaf dimensions, numbers of lateral nerves, bark appearance and slash smell and colour. These are the sorts of characters used by skilled tree spotters and should be incorporated into field keys. The three sets of dichotomous keys and the illustration (line drawings) of species in groups facilitates three methods of identification: using the rough key to get to a group then skim through the illustrations; working through the main key to a particular species and then refer to its description and illustration for confirmation or standing at the base of a tall tree with the special key and using bark and trunk characters combined with leaf characters observed with binoculars. The rough and main keys lead with leaf arrangement, and the main key is divided into 13 subkeys to keep the maximum number of couplets down to 73. The special key will help users to find the correct fallen leaves on the forest floor to confirm identification of a particular tree. The accounts are arranged according to their vegetative characteristics to facilitate comparison of similar species, and common species are presented in large font and rare species in small font. It is comprehensive and innovative, and should still be of use anywhere in the mountains of central Africa.

An A4 sized guide to 660 species consisting of two keys based on vegetative characteristics and including useful notes on identification, comprehensive listings of local names and line drawings by Rosemary Wise. The main key groups species according to leaf characters, with similar species illustrated on the same page and the key incorporating the descriptive text on the facing page. Some information is given on flowers and fruit. Many of the vegetative details used are not publicised in classical botanical literature.

The second, smaller key is to the 200 common forest species and is based on bark, slash, trunk and crown characters. A section at the back gives thumbnail colour photographs of the slash and bark of some common species.

The guide incorporates the final descriptive text in the indented keys, opposite the relevant drawings of the species in question. Therefore, the meaning of all key questions usually can be checked against the final species. Also, candidate species can be selected by browsing the pictures; the text opposite the picture can be checked for further details, but crucially, so can the staements about the species in the key leading to the species. In this way, a combination of identification by browing and use of diagnostic text is facilitaed.

 

A good example of an old-style reference manual for foresters. The dichotomous keys work well and lead with leaf characters and the descriptions detail vegetative as well as fertile characters. The taxonomy was revised and new species added for a second edition (Trees of Nigeria. Keay, R.W.J., Oxford University Press 1989), but only the first edition includes a numerical key to genera based on 16 vegetative characters that is still useful today. Also, some of the rarer or smaller trees were dropped from the second edition, which is frustrating for conservationist-minded foresters.

This field guide is innovative in several respects. The focus is entirely on identification and most information superfluous to that end has been stripped out. Annotated line drawings replace the more traditional block of descriptive text with accompanying illustrations. The illustrations are kept large by being arranged two to a page, side by side (the book is wider than it is long), and the thumbnail diagrams in the margin facilitate quick identification by flicking. A diagrammatic tree-type key based on leaf structure and arrangement leads to 8 sections (e.g. Group 1: simple, alternate leaves with entire margins), each with a dichotomous key to species. Most importantly, this guide demonstrates that by focusing on leaf characters it is possible to produce a useful field guide based entirely on illustrations and data that can be derived from herbarium specimens. The guide has not compromised on specimen citations; their inclusion is an acknowledgement that good reference specimens are an integral component of the identification mechanism.

The first in a comprehensive series of field guides to the dipterocarps of Malesia, and one of the first field guides to be produced in combination with interactive identification software (provided on a computer disk with the book). The keys and detailed descriptions emphasize vegetative characters and are illustrated with line drawings. The leaves and fruit of similar species are illustrated on the same page.

A useful learning aid for anyone wishing to obtain a good knowledge of the tree flora. Invaluable for the area it covers and small enough to fit in a pocket, all it lacks is illustrations. It consists of a dichotomous key divided into subgroups, the largest for simple-alternate leaves has 125 couplets. There is an additional pullout flow-chart key to families based on vegetative characters and designed like a tree. The branches represent characters and the leaves are families and the principal diagnostic characters are shown.

A photographic identification guide to the vascular plants of the Ducke Reserve near Manaus in Central Brazil, that packs about 2200 species into less than 800 pages. It including keys, descriptions and copious colour photographs (showing bark, slash, fresh leaves, dried leaves, flowers and fruit) and line drawings. It was expensive to produce, but the result is an innovative and valuable contribution to Amazonian botany. The structure of the book will encourage inexperienced botanists to develop family recognition skills, while experts should be able to arrive at an identification quickly by skimming through the photographs of the relevant group. The inclusion of photographs of dried as well as fresh leaves should please herbarium botanists. The detailed description of identification characters serves as a synoptic key to families. Each family is described in detail and the flowers and fruit of representative genera and species are illustrated. The species accounts are illustrated with colour photographs of leaves and bark, and identification proceeds by visually recognizing the correct species from the illustrations within the genus or sub-group of related species.

An innovative field guide with full-page line drawings, dichotomous keys, comparative tables and an emphasis on field recognition. Although the guide is to the genus Acacia, the main key starts by eliminating other plant groups with bipinnate compound leaves. Other strong features include the comparative illustrations showing the pods of many species together and the comparative tables. The tables represent a character matrix (vegetative characters as columns and reproductive characters as rows with species occupying the cells) and a species matrix (characters as columns and species as rows).