Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas (Princeton Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Andrew Henderson (Author), Gloria Galeano (Author), Rodrigo Bernal (Author)

Book Description

Series: Princeton Paperbacks | Publication Date: July 7, 1997

This user-friendly and authoritative book will serve scientists, growers, and sightseers as a guide to the 67 genera and 550 species of naturally occurring palms found in the Americas. Its purpose is to give an introduction to the diversity of palms and allow almost anyone to identify a palm from this part of the world. Providing scientifically accurate descriptions and a rich supply of illustrations, including color photos taken in the wild of over 256 species, this guide is extraordinary in its coverage of the plant that has become for many people the symbol of the tropical landscape.

Palms are not only aesthetically pleasing, but they also make up an economically and ecologically important family of plants. In industry, for example, the coconut, oil palm, and date palm have a wide and varied use. In the lowland rain forest, palms are usually one of the most abundant and diverse families of plants. Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas will appeal to professional scientists or students working in the tropics-including agronomists, anthropologists, ecologists, entomologists, natural historians, and zoologists-as well as to amateur and professional growers of palms, to "eco-tourists" who visit tropical regions, and to inhabitants of these regions who are interested in the native flora.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Palms are an important plant family. Ornamentally, they symbolize a tropical landscape to most of us; economically, they provide important products to millions of people in both subsistence and modern commercial economies. Although both of these books provide a wealth of information on palms, they differ in coverage. Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas takes a botanical approach to help readers identify palms naturally occurring in the Americas. A brief introduction and a key to the genera are followed by descriptions of 67 individual species, including identification, characteristics, habitat, and interesting notes. A separate section of 64 color plates, a distribution map for each species, checklists, and a detailed bibliography and index are also offered. Species descriptions are written by taxonomists but are reasonably comprehensible and interesting to the amateur; unfortunately, there is no glossary to explain technical terms. Palms Throughout the World, an expansion of Jones's popular Palms in Australia (1984), takes a horticultural approach. Its descriptions of 800 species in 123 genera include cultivation and propagation information as well as descriptions, and its 350 color photographs are conveniently located next to the species they illustrate. The long introductory section includes information on the structure, biology, and economic uses of palms as well as their disease and cultivation requirements. A glossary is provided. Both works would be useful in academic horticultural libraries. Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas is the only comprehensive field guide for its area, although Natalie Uhl and John Dransfield's definitive Genera Palmarum (Allen Pr., 1987) provides more detailed botanical information. Palms of the World is a more attractive book and would have greater appeal to general readers.?Marit MacArthur, Auraria Lib., Denver, Col.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Scientific American

The reason why this should become a standard reference, as well as a field guide, is that the species concepts are broad and allow for the considerable variation that palms exhibit in the field. Highly recommended.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 363 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (July 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691016003
• ISBN-13: 978-0691016009
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,367,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have!, April 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas (Princeton Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This is probably the most useful book for anyone involved in plant identification, such as Forest Engineers, specially those working in tropical America, where one often encounters many kinds of palms in the field, but until now it was not easy to identify them, and palms are mostly overlooked because they have the reputation of being difficult to identify. This book changes it all, and it's definitely a must-have.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must have, October 6, 2005

By 

Jan Matiaska (Slovakia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas (Princeton Paperbacks) (Paperback)

if you're interested in neotropical palms, you ought to buy this excellent guide. all three authors are considered to be highly esteemed authorities who know their stuff very well. the description said it had approximately 380 pages, but together with all the appendices and photo pages, the total number of pages gets to 500.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The American palm compendium, November 16, 2005

By 

Christopher J. Sharpe "Chris Sharpe" (Caracas, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas (Princeton Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Palms are a very conspicuous feature of the tropical landscape, whether in the wilds of Central and South America or in the suburban environments further north. They are also important economically (usually as fruit crops) and culturally (having uses as diverse as roofing, as material for weaving hammocks as fodder for edible beetle larvae!). Since everyone knows what a palm is, yet most non-specialists cannot get much beyond that, this guide to their identification should fill a niche.

This is a field guide to the 550 species of palm occurring naturally in the American tropics. The taxonomic treatment seems to this non-specialist to be eminently sensible and many knotty systematic probems appear to have been carefully resolved. A 40 page appendix of accepted names helps clarify what has happened to some of the older synonyms, hybrid names and such.

The authors have crammed an awful lot of new and useful information into the three-hundred and fifty odd pages. A main key permits identification to genera with further keys sprinkled throughout the body of the book. There are handy introductions to families and genera. The text is succinct and well oriented towards field identification while the 236 photographs at the back allow the user to quickly narrow down the search by visual means. Maps are provided for every species - this must have been a huge task! - and country checklists provide a further tool for homing in on the plant in question.

In resume, this is a master work which will be seen in the field for decades to come. It should be high on the list of any tropical landscape gardener, horticulturalist, anthropologist, botanist or naturalist.