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Reviewed by:
  • Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide
  • Judy Kingsbury (bio)
Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide Peter Del Tredici. 2010. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Paper, $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-8014-7458-3. 392 pages.

I love field guides and am readily seduced by clear, concise descriptions paired with color photographs. Given this predilection, I was inclined to like Peter Del Tredici's Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide at first sight. Overall, I am pleased with the book and think it mostly lives up to its goals and my expectations. "The basic goal of Wild Urban Plants is to help the general reader identify the plants that grow spontaneously in the urban environment and develop an appreciation for the role they play in making our cities more livable" (p 1). It fulfills the latter goal admirably and is a mixed bag in the identification department.

What qualities make for an excellent field guide? Different people will have different preferences, I look for the following:

Portability. Will the book actually fit into my fanny pack? At 22.8 cm long by 15.2 cm wide by 2 cm thick, Wild Urban Plants fit into my fanny pack along with two other field guides, a hand lens, and a pruning saw.

Durability. Can it withstand rough handling and field use? This book has a sturdy binding, well-glued and sewn. Pages aren't likely to fall out anytime soon.

Index quality. Are the species indexed by scientific name, common name, and variations on the common name? Plant families and scientific names are here, plus common names by both first and second word of the name (i.e., box elder is indexed under "box elder" and "elder, box"; false nutsedge is indexed under "false nutsedge" and "nutsedge, false"), making it easy to find species in the index.

Pictorial glossary. Are frequently used terms illustrated? Unfortunately, there are no illustrations of basic terms such as opposite, alternate, simple, compound, palmate, pinnate, entire, toothed, and lobed. A couple of pages devoted to illustrating these terms would help beginners better understand these terms, and thus the species descriptions.

Written glossary. Does the glossary include all technical terms and define them in plain English? Generally, yes. The glossary is very thorough. Given that the distinction between monocots and dicots is a basic one for the book's organization, it would be helpful to include more characteristics (beyond number of cotyledons)—such as venation and number of flower petals—that distinguish these two classes in the definition or as a separate table, with the caveat that there are exceptions to generalities about these characteristics.

Sensible organization. This is tricky, and what is sensible to me may be confusing to others. Del Tredici lists the species by major botanical categories (ferns, horsetails, conifers, woody dicots, herbaceous dicots, and monocots) and breaks these categories down further into plant families arranged alphabetically. This works well for me, better than arranging by flower color or size, as plant size can vary considerably from site to site, and perceptions of flower color vary considerably from person to person (what is pink to me may be purple to you!). Those with some botanical training will be able to quickly find a description of an unknown specimen by turning to its likely family. Beginners would welcome brief descriptions of ferns, horsetails, conifers, woody plants, herbaceous plants, dicots, and monocots. Additionally, when a nonbotanist companion and I took the book for a test run at a nearby driveway crack, he was mildly frustrated with the exclusion of several plant families from Appendix Five, "Key Characteristics of Important Plant Families," which covers just 64% of the species in the book. The appendix did not help him hone in on key attributes of the plant families that would have narrowed down his search to one or a few families. He also would have preferred to have the "How to Use This Book," portion of the introduction as a separate section, listed in the table of contents.

Photos. Do the photos show the flowers and foliage close up, and is there a photo of the overall growth habit...

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