Plant Books

 I've noticed over the years that plant books can be great or they can be mediocre. One of the things that makes a great plant book is the illustrations. I find that drawings are best. Granted, its nice to have color photographs, but sometimes the plant details just don't show that well. Therefore my take on drawings. A good drawing can show the minute details of the plant in question. Things such as the flowers, leaf scars, outline and shape of the leafs, etc. Have you ever noticed how the Peterson guides are all drawings? They use photos in some of the newest ones, but, the older editions have drawings and a few have a nice little section of photos which I consider eye candy. I have quite a digital collection of 19th century botany and herb books and the only color in them is hand painted plates and almost all the illustrations are drawings in black and white. I recall a book put out in 1905 about wildflowers and it had some of the first photos of flowers used for every plant described. The photos were in black and white and some few were hand colorized. They were not very useful. The saving grace for this book; there were drawings of the plants.

As you become more familiar with botany you develop a natural quickness in going right to the section of the books when you can distinguish certain botanical traits. Things such as number of flower petals, lanceolate versus heart shaped leaves, paired, opposite, smooth edges versus toothed, etc. These things can only be learned from drawings in my opinion.

This is a small list of some of my books on plants and the information contained whether drawings or photographs.

Peterson Field Guides:

1 Edible Wild Plants-Eastern US = drawings and a small section of photographs

2 Medicinal Plants-Eastern US = drawings and a small section of photographs

3 Trees & Shrubs-Eastern US = drawings only both 1958 and 1986 editions

4 Ferns = drawings only

Wild Edible Plants of the Western US by Kirk  = drawings and a small section of photographs

Edible Wild Plants Eastern US  Fernald & Kinsey = drawings only

The Illustrated Book of Wildflowers & Shrubs Grimm = drawings only

Botany in a Day Elpel = drawings only

The above list shows the importance of clarity in a plant description. I haven't seen too many photo's that can show such clarity in details unless they are high quality closeups.