Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary

by Melinda Woolf Harris and James G. Harris

Book Overview

Plant identification employs an extensive and complex terminology. Professional botanists often need several years in the field to master this terminology, and it presents a daunting obstacle to the student of botany.

The winner of the CHOICE Best Academic Books Award in its first edition, Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary, Second Edition has been thoroughly reillustrated and includes more than 300 additional...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0964022168
• ISBN13: 9780964022164
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Length: 217 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up

Customer Reviews

Useful & Necessary Companion

This is the kind of book every beginning botanist ought to have. Directing an herbal medicine school, I teach people how to use a technical key, in our case "Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas." Having this book at hand means that my students don't have to memorize the 30 different ways that a leaf can be hairy -- pubescent, tomentose, scurfy, etc. For those of us who aren't botany majors (and maybe some who are), having this book at your side while keying out a plant is indispensable. Can't think of another book like it.

Extremely helpful companion to vascular plant key

Very good visual and textual descriptions of plant parts-essential to working through a plant key. I recommend it for my college plant id lab.

Valuable tool for a field ecologist

I am a plant community ecologist that prides myself in knowing many of the plants in the Intermountain West. However, myself and students are always finding new plants, especially as we move into new areas. My primary plant keys are the Intermountain Flora and Plants of the Pacific Northwest. Since I only key a couple months out of the year I forget many of the terms, needing a refresher as I start back out in the spring (my students call it winter death). My students and I find this book very useful and easy to use, particarly for beginning students. It is always with us in the field.

The best book available on the subject

The title says it all. This is an illustrated glossary to the terms you may encounter while identifying plants. It is beautifully illustrated and the definitions are clear and concise. The book takes much of the pain out of using an identification key and is tremendously useful for both professionals and students.I disagree with a previous reviewer who characterized this book as "shallow" because it doesn't include detailed information about the terms included. That's kind of like labeling a dictionary as "shallow" because it doesn't provide encyclopedic entries. "Plant Identification Terminology" isn't intended to be a comprehensive guide to plant morphology.This is a wonderful book at a surprisingly reasonable price and for its intended purpose it is the only game in town - nothing else even comes close.

Great for the advanced amateur

If you're an amateur trying to key out a strange plant -- and you've gone beyond the stage of using guides with sections on "plants with red flowers" to using more advanced guides, this book can help you cut through the forest of technical terms. It has the usual alphabetical listing of terms and definitions -- but what makes it work for me are the sections arranged by structure. For example, all the terms to describe leaves are collected in one well-illustrated section, as are terms describing flowers, roots, stems, surfaces, and other parts of the plant. The grouped illustrations make it really easy to figure out which term best describes your plant. The book would be best used in conjunction with a technical guide specific to the plants of your region.