Customer Reviews

Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the opening chapter, this book presents a wonderful simplified story of the evolution of plants, from a single cell to modern complex flowers. Both children and adults can gain a unique, intuitive understanding of this process from this explanation. My compliments to the author. He describes each plant family with interesting anecdotes and high quality line drawings. It's the first plant book whose lack of photographs didn't matter. Great tips for identifying families and individual plants have helped me enormously. Bravo!

Botany in a Day provides an excellent overview to field botany. By learning plant characteristics by family, the reader can more quickly identify their plant by identifying the patterns each plant family presents. The book provides a page or two (or more!) on dozens of the most common families in the northern half of the US. Each plant family section contains additional information about the plant genera represented in this family. The keys to plant families allow the reader to quickly determine what section to turn to. This book is best coupled with a plant field guide to individual species that is grouped by family. You can use the Botany in a Day information to narrow your selection to the family and the field guide to identify the specific species.

I highly recommend this book to both lay and professional people who work with plants.

Any interested in plant identification should consider Botany In A Day: The Patterns Method Of Plant Identification as an important guide. Thomas Elpel (Director of Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School, Pony, Montana) deftly teaches the patterns method of plant identification, providing a method for learning about groupings of plants based on the idea that related plants have similar patterns for identification, and similar uses. Black and white line drawings accompany descriptions of different plant families and their identification processes.

This book ranks with such classics of plant indentification as Agnes Chase's A First Book of Grasses, or Donald Culross Peattie's books on tree indentification. Taking a bird's-eye view and then drilling down from there, it provides an overview of plant structure and evolution as well as many technical details relating to the structure and identification of plants. This would make an excellent first book for anyone wanting to know more about the subject. After this, you can try some of the more detailed field manuals and then try to get your feet wet with some of the real taxonomic keys. These require some knowledge of plant anatomy, but there's nothing that difficult about that, except that having a good memory is a help. But really, it doesn't take that much smarts and anyone can learn to identify the most common trees, flowers, and even fungi in their area with a little time and patience.

This book is one for the field botanist, but as far as it's promises of learning 43,000 plants quickly and easily it is misleading. It is a cumbersome process for the amateur field botanist. For the seasoned botanist there are errors that taint the qualifications of the author. That said, it makes a good addition to the well-stocked field botany library. It's approach using families for identification makes it useful.

This is the most comprehensive, thoughtful, well written book I know of on plant identification and their subsequent utilization as a resource be it food, rope or medicine. I am in awe at the depth of experience the author has with the plants in the book. The grouping and classification is clear and interesting. The patterns used to identify are within reach of anyone, its as if I've been given a key to unlock some of the beautiful mysteries of nature. I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of nature. Now I am truly participating in nature.

So far it has allowed me to teach my kids (3 and 5) more about plants than I learned in 25 years! I love this book.

I appreciate the Medicinal Properties of Plants section which has enough detail for a chemist but is understandable to the layperson as well. The entire book is written like that; professional or layperson will get a profound lesson. Its like an entire course on wild plants but written in a reference manual style with a very personal touch.

This has given me a level of confidence I have always desired. Any human being should be given a copy of this book at birth! This should be in every library and taught in every school. If animals could read I would recommend it to them to. Peace

My most used book til now has been Audubon Sociey Field Guide to North American Flowers - it lists color pics by color then shape and saves time in honing in on identification. However, there are many wildflowers that do not appear there and this is where Botany in a Day is a great help. You learn to identify plants by family so you are at least in the same family, and possibly sub family or tribe. My previous color picture herb identification is validated for more certainty by reading more about the plant's qualities. Some plants I have found this way, and even if a herb is not identified, I have a pretty good idea what it does based on the family. I enjoy my morning herb tea sitting outside and getting more familiar with the plants and their families - they are my neighbors and dear ones at that. Furthermore, the book describes some of the medicinal benefits and cites some research on those benefits. It is an excellent resource guide, teaching by learning plant-family patterns.

I want to start by saying that This book is NOT a field guide for identification. The main thrust of this book is to teach you how to approach learning plants according to the patterns that they are named for and by. Botany in a day is an invaluable asset to any naturalist's arsenal of literature, especially someone who's a beginner, but also for those who are intermediate and advanced. With this guide you will be able to travel to unfamiliar parts of the world and make logical deductions about the kind of plants you find there, as to their variety and possible uses. And that is what makes this book so special, once you've learned about the different plant families you will be set free and I guarantee you'll never look at the plant world the same way again.

Botany in a Day is extremely nutrient dense. Most importantly you get the patterns of each family that make identification easy. On top of that you get medicinal, food and primitive uses of many species. Detailed sketches of some species and more importantly their parts ie;stamens, petals, sepals, etc. Plants are indexed separately both by common and scientific name. You get a tutorial at the beginning that explains a little about plants "evolution" and why plants are named and classified the way they are. This puts the whole plant kingdom in to context in a way that you can begin to wrap your mind around the way they're organized. There's also sections on plant compound groups such as volatile oils, glycosides and so on.

I wish I could get a copy of this for each of my relative's families. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to make sense of the plant kingdom, it will change the way you see the outdoors!

Edit 2.21.10: One thing I forgot to mention is that I was unimpressed with Elpel's stance on the use of marijuana. He, as an author and a person often proposes looking at life "With unbounded open-mindedness tempered by equally unbounded skepticism" But then he goes on to claim that many youth are led astray by the use of it. But I don't think that's the case at all, I think the mainstream mentality of our society is what leads the major part of the population to be vapid and materialistic when they would find a holistic life much more fulfilling. As a young a child growing up in the suburbs I lived life by the clock and was very stressed out because of it. marijuana forced me to slow down and take in the splendor and beauty of everything around us and, though not by itself only, marijuana caused me to love life, and realize what an incredible gift each second really is. While I know it's possible to abuse the substance, I do believe there are healthy uses for it as well.

This book lays out the general approach through which a beginner can make sense of the vast amount of information he or she faces in learning botany. I found it most helpful.

Take a really dry subject and turn it into a book I couldn't put down!

Tom Elpel's style is right on target and his book is turning into a constant companion for my outings!