Customer Reviews

The Bamboos of the World: Annotated Nomenclature and Literature of the Species and the Higher and Lower Taxa

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This information-rich reference work will be invaluable for those deeply invested in bamboo taxonomy or systematics, but those botanists or laypeople looking for an identification manual-type treatment should not waste the significant amount of money required to purchase it. The book contains terse descriptions of every species (and many cultivars) of bamboo known to the author at the time of publication, along with synonymy and very brief entries on geographic distributions, and also annotated lists of currently recognized supra-specific taxa. Perhaps of greatest value are the lists of publications relating to each species, which are exhaustive and represent a colossal amount of work. Completely lacking however are photographs, illustrations, and botanical identification keys. This unfortunate omission significantly reduces the accessibility of the other information, since one absolutely must have some relatively good idea of what species to look up before this book will become useful as something more than a paperweight. It shines more as an annotated bibliography indexed by species than anything else.