Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Eastern Trees (Peterson Field Guides)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Peterson's has about the best pocket-sized tree guide out there (I much prefer it to the Audubon guide, which I also own), but I won't kid with you - identifying trees is hard. It takes time, patience, and a keen eye. Just looking at leaves is usually not enough to make a positive identification. Depending on the species and the time of year, you may also have to examine bark, the twigs, flowers, buds, or fruits. The best part of the Peterson guide is that it has summer and winter keys in the back - don't ignore them just because the keys have no pictures! They are invaluable. Without them, you might find yourself lost among the many pages of illustrations. Perhaps the best resource to supplement this guide would be contact with an expert on the flora of your area - perhaps a naturalist at a local park or a forestry professor at a nearby university.

I use other field guides for browsing, but this is the guide I use when I go out into the field and I really want to identify things. It uses a very clear key to subdivide trees into specific groups (like needleleaf/broadleaf or opposit-leaved/alternate-leaved), narrowing down the choices and making identification much easier. The drawings are very clear, and as a bonus, you get a tiny map for each species identifying its exact geographical range. Highly recommended.

I know quite a bit about trees [boy scout, landscaping, etc], and I found this book to be very confusing in its layout. Not all of the trees described have all identification visually depicted -- leaf, bark, twig, seed -- and what pictures it has are separated from the text description by hundreds of pages. "Okay, this is an oak leaf, and they're described here... hmm, the pictures are back there ... hold on, let me use the leaf as a bookmark ..." Not handy at all.

The text itself is very detailed, but the "how to use this book" chapter doesn't show pictures to describe what is meant by the specific terms it uses. So even though I know quite a bit about trees, I found myself having to go back to botany books to look up 'bundled leaf scar' [and other terms] so I could try to determine from text only the difference between one specific tree from a similar one, only one of which is poisonous to my horses.

As a result, I am confused, and we have to wait until the tree completely leafs out in a month or two before we can make the determination whether to cut it down or not.

Additionally, only a fraction of the trees it contains has habitat or range maps, so I can't even tell whether I need to be concerned about a specific tree being native in my area. And in one case, the Osage Orange which grows like weeds here and has for at least a hundred years, shows a range limited to TX and S.W. AR ... 300 miles away. I've seen better tree-ident books in the book stores when I needed to look up one specific item. I wish I could remember the names of them.

On the plus side, the text descriptions are very detailed, and contain lots of interesting tidbits that you wouldn't find elsewhere. I'd suggest that you use other books unless you're actually a forest ranger or a PhD in trees.

Eastern Trees is very concise. It contains alot of photographs and drawings. It truly is a field guide not an encyclopedia. Although, there were times when I desired more information to identify trees first hand, I can't imagine how it could be fit into this pocket size volume. The only complaint I would have would be the photograph size since, they are about 2x3 inches they don't always show enough for identifying purposes. However, the book would have to be much bigger if the photographs were larger, size and cost would definitely increase.

I thought that the "Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Trees" was a very good book to read while at home, but it was difficult to use while I was actually "in the woods." I was looking for something with more illustrations and photos, and larger print wouldn't have hurt either. It would have also been simpler to use if the authors would have included all of the details, about a particular species, together in the book, rather than devoting one section to leaves of all species, another to silhouettes of all species, etc.

If you like having color plates in your field guide this one is not for you. I found it difficult to work with and hard to find information I needed. For a field guide it has too much written information looking to list various tees but not enough total tree information. For instance, the buds and leaves are shown but not the tree bark or the silhouettes with each. Silhouettes are provided for types but not referenced for the various species. One has to jump around with the guide looking for information on the same specie of tree. For identifying species in the field the book falls far short. Color plates are a limited number of diagrams and sketches instead of photos, a major weakness. On a positive note, greater emphasis in locating species with maps showing growth locations is provided.

As a novice tree identifier in New York City, I wish the book's classifications were more easily located and included more variant names. There is at least one popular tree known variously as the Chinese Scholar Tree and the Japanese Pagoda Tree which does not appear, and, although Florida is filled with wonderful trees, I shall make every effort never to get to Florida to see them and I would have liked more space devoted to the rest of the East and less to Florida. I am certain many people love to identify winter trees by their buds, but I am not one. Although the illustrations are very exciting to look at and very vital, they would be better in a Disney film. I have a local guide which uses photographs and I wish the Peterson Guide used them as well. The most useful segment of the guide is the tree silhouette section.

I bought this for my husband for Christmas. He was blown away by all the information this little book contained. The only thing he said that he didn't care for was that some of the pictures were in black and white and he would have prefered all colored pictures.

I bought this book for my Botany class, and I got me where I needed to be. Identified the trees I needed, but There aren't pictures for all the trees, or their flowering parts, acorns, or cones...or even the area maps of them. And the plates where there are pictures are actually separete from the information, so it was just a pain.
But over all it was effective, not a bad book, and from what I've heard one of the best tree guides.

this isn't that easy to use-- hard to find a specific tree in the book. I've seen other books elsewhere that are useful, and plan to pick something else up. The 'plates' are pretty lousy and outdated as well. Most illustrations still leave you questioning whether (or not) you actually are looking at the tree you just think you identified. Photographs would be a much added benefit to the sketches and plates in this sense.

I use other field guides, particularly for birding and insect identification, so I know it's not just me... spend your money elsewhere.