Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America: With Supplementary Notes on Herbaceous Taxa

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This book is the only one to cover so extensively the flora of Colombia in such an accessible way. You won't regret this purchase. It certainly deserves five stars.

I'm an amateur naturalist -- and had the plants of the Eastern US pretty well under control. All that went out the window when I moved to Nicaragua. This is the first broad, clear, complete guide to neo-tropical woody plants (and lots of the herbaceous plants as well) I've seen. Although it was written for Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, it does well enough for Central America. Just leafing through the illustrations has given me the family, and often the genus, of lots of the plants I've seen in our cloud forests. The author has a very readable style, laced with an understated sense of humour that bubbles to the surface on several occasions. See the entry for Euphorbiaceae, for example.

The book is not, however, for the complete beginner. Unless you are thoroughly familiar with the arcane botanical terminology, you will need a botanical dictionary. "Plant Identification Terminology" by Harris is a good one.

This is a compleat, comprehensive guide to Colombian flora, works fine whitout reproductive characters been present, has extensive taxonomic keys, great illustrations and besides all these, it's the main work from Dr. Gentry on the flora of northwest southamerica, it's been for the last seven years my main reference source and of my students on the study of plant taxonomy on the flora of Colombia. It also makes a little (but quite little!)easy to endure the early past of Dr. Gentry. As a final note, you can easily go from this book to especialized literature on species level without seams. A must have for every tropical botanist.

I have field-tested this book for the last 18 years with students in tropical American forests. It literally transforms the process of identifying plants in these forests, making it possible for botanists and botany students with an understanding of plants but little experience in the tropics to break into the vastly more complex and difficult world of identifying tropical plants. It is the one book I would take to the tropics for field identification of plants.
It's important to realize that this book is for work in natural vegetation --- in primary and secondary forests and forest remnants. Additionally, it focuses on trees (though it includes identification guides to things like orchids and bromeliads). It's not for identifying street trees and garden plants.

This book is very important for a botanist planning for and visiting the rainforests of Eastern Ecuador. I spent three weeks in the regions around Tena, Ecuador (near Jatun Sacha) and consulted this text routinely for keying out and identifying specimens and learning more about the flora of this portion of the western edge of the Amazon basin.

The book necessarily is heavy because of the diversity of the flora, but this paperback edition is well enough constructed to last three weeks in rainforest unscathed!

Being a plant physiologist from the north temperate zone, I normally require a flower to identify a plant or to classify it into a family. I was amazed that, with this field guide, I could do as well with bark, twig, and leaf. Indeed in a tropical rainforest, unless you climb up into the canopy (a daunting task), flowers and fruits are rare. So floristic-based keys and texts would fail here. Gentry provides the scientist with a critically important text to help identify and understand the flora in a complex and high-canopied forest.

My only negative criticism of this book is that the nomenclature used assumes the reader is very-well experienced with and has mastered the vocabulary in plant morphology, anatomy, and developmental botany. A high-quality glossary is needed for less-experienced readers. I took another text with me for this purpose (reviewed elsewhere).

This book is highly recommended for anyone visiting the rainforests of the western Amazon basin.

If you are interesting in plants, and you live in latin_america this is a book for you!! Al Gentry give us a view of tropical plats...in a taxonomic way... but includes practical and field tips to recognize families and some genera, and includes some simply and helpful illustrations . This "little" field guide it is some like the "Botanic Bible" of tropical American botanists (However I am a template Southamerican, I found this like a book of "head"....!!)

The best avaliable guide to the wood plants of this region of South America that I am aware of.

I'm an amateur naturalist -- and had the plants of the Eastern US pretty well under control. All that went out the window when I moved to Nicaragua. This is the first broad, clear, complete guide to neo-tropical woody plants (and lots of the herbaceous plants as well) I've seen. Although it was written for Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, it does well enough for Central America. Just leafing through the illustrations has given me the family, and often the genus, of lots of the plants I've seen in our cloud forests. The author has a very readable style, laced with an understated sense of humour that bubbles to the surface on several occasions. See the entry for Euphorbiaceae, for example.

The book is not, however, for the complete beginner. Unless you are thoroughly familiar with the arcane botanical terminology, you will need a botanical dictionary. "Plant Identification Terminology" by Harris is a good one.