Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa

Introduction to the Third Edition

Acknowledgments We are especially thankful for the inspirational work of the late botanist and artist Anna Gardner. Her pioneering use of digital scanning to capture tree characteristics in intimate detail helped thousands of dendrology students become better biologists and provided the basic plan for the plates in this book. Many of Anna’s original, beautifully informative scanned images are included in this book. We are deeply indebted to Chanda Skelton for contributing her artistic, botanical , and computer skills to the construction of the plates from thousands of potential images and for managing the huge image database. We are grateful to Jeffery Iles, professor and chair in the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University, for contributing his recommendations of the best crabapples for Iowa. We thank the Iowa State University Publication Endowment Fund for funding in support of this project. Finally, we acknowledge the artistry of Carol Jacobs, who created the drawings that appeared in all three editions of this book. ...