Customer Reviews

How To Identify Grasses: And Grasslike Plants

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

 

 

As a former student of the late Dr. Harrington who taught me much about plant classification, I highly recommend this book. It is similar to his How to Identify Plants, but the diagrams are much better. It is a very thorough review of the morphology and terminology specific to sedges, rushes, and grasses. These are all very difficult families to identify and there are few books that so thoroughly describe the critical and unique morphology of these plants. This is a knowledge that is critical to the identification of these fascinating and important plants. Dr. Harrington also includes a section on the vegetative characteristics, especially of grasses. For field ecologists like myself, being able to identify plants without the flowers, especially grasses, is critical when doing quantitative sampling. If you are just a beginner in your pursuit of these difficult plants, this is an excellent and valuable resource. But for even the plant scientist this book provides an excellent reference to refresh your memory regarding the unique and important mophology of grasses, sedges, and rushes.

This book is practical and systematic. The topic is difficult, at best, and the author gives all the tools and understanding needed to build up your skills. As a consultant that works with native plant materials, I have found this book to be a useful field reference in separating out invasive species.

Although the book title implies that if we use the book we will be able to identify different grasses, there isn't a shred of information it this book that will allow us to identify any grass species. The book seems to have been created for a class on grass biology. It has a lot of good pictures on the different parts of the grass plant. But for instance if we want to know what Big Bluestem grass looks like, or if we are looking at a plant and want to figure out what species it is, this book does not provide any of that information at all. If you are looking for a companion book to a class on grass biology, this book is great. If you want to try to identify grass species, this book is worthless without a lot of additional information.

Not especially useful for beginner grass identification because concentrates on structural detail rather than overall appearance of growth. However, I recommend it for its excellent illustrated glossary.

My review title should have been the title of this book. I for the most part agree with all reviews up until the date of this one. This book will not allow you to identify a grass in your yard to a species; however, what it will do is give you a thorough overview of techniques and terminology associated with identifying grasses, sedges and rushes. It contains an illustrated glossary that is very useful. You will however need another book to get descriptions of various species found in the U.S. or elsewhere.

This book is esentially a manual of definitions related to grass biology. If you read it cover to cover, you will not be able to identify any species of grass at all. If you have a book that gives the characteristics of various species for the purpose of identification - and that book uses terms like "gibbous" or mentions "carpels" or a "bearded lemma" as a characteristidc of a certain species, the definitions of those terms are given in this book. The whole book is esentially a glossery of grass terms with some line drawing illustrations of parts. Don't look for definitions or pictures for the words "Ryegrass", "Bluestem", or "Oats". They are not there.

I finally bought a copy of this book for myself after having to borrow it from my plant friends and professors. They would not permit it out of their sight! Anyway it is a very good start to getting accustomed to grasses. They can be quite challenging to identify but this book is very helpful. It is pretty basic, to the point and recommended. It may be a bit challenging for a newbie, but really there is no easy way to learn plant terminology. This one is a good ice breaker!

There are a lot of plants that become colorful on the earth.
The plant that occupies the majority of Holocene place is a grasses and grasslike plants.
However, if it is not a specialist, the grasses and grasslike plant are not distinguished easily.
I am a farmer. The grasses and grasslikes were an annoying weed in me.
This book is a book that gave me new feeling to the grasses and grasslikes. It is not an interpretation weed in me any further any longer. I give my thanks to Doctor Harrington.

This book is as splendid as "Peterson first guides".
I call this book and "How to identify plants" "HARRINGTON MANUALS" !

With this book, you will know all about how to identify a grass, and not be able to identify a single one. It reminds me of the new husband who sits on the edge of the bed and tells his new wife how wonderful it is going to be, but never gets around to it.
I returned the book.