Customer Reviews

Autumn Leaves: A Guide to the Fall Colors of the Northwoods (Northword Nature Guide Collection)

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Despite its small size and paperback format, this is one of my most treasured books. I am a resident of Michigan, and the fall is always a highlight of our year. Michiganders, as an army, await autumn leaves and "leaf peeping", as young children await Christmas morning. This is the ONLY book I've ever seen that really gives its reader a good understanding of this beautiful phenomenon.

The first 17 or so pages give a physical, chemical, and biological discourse on why leaves change, and on what goes into the makeup of the various colors. The next 100+ pages cover all deciduous trees of northeastern North America, in turn, with a good discussion of each species being attended by excellent four-color photographs of the subject tree in various formats, including group, solo, and partial shots. Finally a sixty-page section gives the same ememplary treatment to northeastern North American evergreens. These, too, form part of the fall patterns, albeit in a more subdued way.

If you live in the area bounded by Ontario, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, Maine, New Brunswick, and Quebec, or are planning to visit any states or provinces in that area this fall, buy this book now, and read it over. You'll be glad you did, this year and every year. I would give this book a ten-star rating if I could, and recommend it highly. An invaluable bargain.

This is really well done. There are numerous color photos (both closeups, some whole tree shots, and often a shot of a grouping of trees showing the characteristics of the tree being described. I highly recommend this for anyone wanting a guide to Fall trees or even for planning your plantings. It's also reasonably priced. My only misgiving is that it isn't longer and cover the entire eastern US!

This book is a guide to trees one can encounter in the woods of the Northeast. It opens with a brief yet informative description of the science behind the changing colors of autumn leaves, including some suggestions for easy science experiments to provide further understanding of the processes involved. The main part of the book is divided into two sections: deciduous trees and conifers. In this section, there are short articles for individual trees, presented in order of which trees are most common and striking in their autumn glory, rather than in alphabetical or family order. The articles include common names, Latin names, and multiple high quality color pictures of autumn foliage, as well as notes concerning what the wood might be used for, well-known literary references, and descriptive information. At the back of the book is a short list of titles for further reference and an index. This book is not intended as a guidebook for tree identification, but more a celebration of northern trees when they are at their colorful peak. The depth and readability of its descriptions of individual trees, however, would make it a suitable supplement to a tree identification guide for readers who want to learn more about the trees they already know by sight.