Customer Reviews

The Dendrobiums

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

 

 

Howard Wood's The Dendrobiums is a massive volume, numbering xxiii+ 847 pp. + 117 pp of photographs - approximately 1000 pp. at the hefty retail price of $150 USD. This volume covers quite a range of topics and certainly is the most comprehensive available volume on the tribe Dendrobieae. Unfortunately, I do not think the volume to be worth the price, even at the substantial discounts at which it is presently available. In brief, the numerous typographic (including type setting) errors are very distracting and speak for a need for a careful and thorough edit. More importantly, I found this volume to be based too frequently on personal opinion and conjecture, without adequate development of his opinions and conclusions. For example, the author says he is not trying to make taxonomic changes, while in places he makes them, usually with little explanation. The sections on numerical taxonomy and DNA analysis are particularly incomplete, leaning heavily upon Yukawa's research, and in general the writing on the evolution and ecology of the tribe is not very insightful. Figures appear without adequate captions or explanation. The sections on plant and flower anatomy and the regional/country floras are useful, and the regional floras are available nowhere else except in a comprehensive university or museum library. Citations and references are fully given in the extensive bibliography. The photographs are mostly from Wood's own collection, as are the cultural notes. For the amateur grower, the cultural notes are likely to be less than helpful, since by Wood's own admission they are based upon his experience only - and all rather discouraging, since he found so many species to be unsustainable in cultivation. In brief, the major flaw of this volume is its comprehensiveness. There is something for everyone, but not enough detail to satisfy virtually anyone. Wood's work is a step in the right direction, but given his note concerning how much work is needed, points to how far we have to go to get something better. On balance, as a grower I found the photos of species not to be found anywhere else to be the most useful element in this volume; as a scientist, I found the citations and references to be most useful. However, the combination as it is represented in this book is not very satisfactory. I find the two volumes by Baker and Baker and Lavarack et al., combined with Jay Pfahl's species encyclopedia on the internet, to constitute a more useful set of resources for this subject than The Dendrobiums.

A very good book for the serious student of the subject.
For the dendrobium grower of an advanced status the "notes on the species" is rather thin, i.e. that section could have been enlarged.To fill some gaps, perhaps just a simplified list of species with name,origin and C, Int. or W might have helped. But in conjunction with other literature on dendrobiums, it is a great font of knowledge.
Thanks.

The book is about three inches thick! Why? Because the type are way too big. You can read the text three feet away. If this book were to be lay-out in half the font size as in a typical book. This book would have been about an inch thick or less. It is way too pricey and not enough photos, amateurishly illustrations. Leave the trees where they are so the Dendrobiums can grow-on.

An expert describes a huge orchid family. SOme photos and a complex guide of the Dendrobiums.

For this book Howard Wood, has been awarded the Engler Silver Medal for 2006 for a work in systematics, given by the Inernational Association for Plant Taxonomy, publisher of the journal Taxon.

Anne C. Wood