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Title: A Field Guide to Eastern Trees (Peterson Field Guides) by Janet Wehr, George A. Petrides, Roger Tory Peterson ISBN: 0-395-90455-2 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great book
Comment: This has been wonderful us as a homeschooling family. It has been an excellent resource to identifying trees in our area. I recommend it to anyone teaching their children at home about trees.
Rating: 4
Summary: A good guide to a difficult subject
Comment: Peterson's has about the best pocket-sized tree guide out there (I much prefer it to the Audubon guide, which I also own), but I won't kid with you - identifying trees is hard. It takes time, patience, and a keen eye. Just looking at leaves is usually not enough to make a positive identification. Depending on the species and the time of year, you may also have to examine bark, the twigs, flowers, buds, or fruits. The best part of the Peterson guide is that it has summer and winter keys in the back - don't ignore them just because the keys have no pictures! They are invaluable. Without them, you might find yourself lost among the many pages of illustrations. Perhaps the best resource to supplement this guide would be contact with an expert on the flora of your area - perhaps a naturalist at a local park or a forestry professor at a nearby university.
Rating: 2
Summary: So-so book. Spend your money elsewhere
Comment: I know quite a bit about trees [boy scout, landscaping, etc], and I found this book to be very confusing in its layout. Not all of the trees described have all identification visually depicted -- leaf, bark, twig, seed -- and what pictures it has are separated from the text description by hundreds of pages. "Okay, this is an oak leaf, and they're described here... hmm, the pictures are back there ... hold on, let me use the leaf as a bookmark ..." Not handy at all.
The text itself is very detailed, but the "how to use this book" chapter doesn't show pictures to describe what is meant by the specific terms it uses. So even though I know quite a bit about trees, I found myself having to go back to botany books to look up 'bundled leaf scar' [and other terms] so I could try to determine from text only the difference between one specific tree from a similar one, only one of which is poisonous to my horses.
As a result, I am confused, and we have to wait until the tree completely leafs out in a month or two before we can make the determination whether to cut it down or not.
Additionally, only a fraction of the trees it contains has habitat or range maps, so I can't even tell whether I need to be concerned about a specific tree being native in my area. And in one case, the Osage Orange which grows like weeds here and has for at least a hundred years, shows a range limited to TX and S.W. AR ... 300 miles away. I've seen better tree-ident books in the book stores when I needed to look up one specific item. I wish I could remember the names of them.
On the plus side, the text descriptions are very detailed, and contain lots of interesting tidbits that you wouldn't find elsewhere. I'd suggest that you use other books unless you're actually a forest ranger or a PhD in trees.
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