Customer Reviews

Invasive Plants of California's Wildlands

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This books is the first book to compile information of invasive species that are a threat to native plant communties. The review for each plant is superb citing historical, physiological, and distribution information. I strongly recommend this book for anyone studying invasive plant species. This book will not be of much help the gardener, but it is incredibly helpful to the conservationist and academic.

This is a very interesting and informative book concerning some of the plants you are most likely to see in California's semi-urbanized wild places... that is, you're often more likely to see these plants than native plants.

However, only a limited number of plants are covered, and there are quite a few very common and highly invasive species that I wish she'd included. This is a compliment to the amount of information she provides about the plants that ARE in the book: where the plant came from, how to get rid of it, how it propagates, various musings of someone evidently quite familiar with the species, and more.

Also, there are a number of species that only occur in southern California, so if you live further north like me, this information is not especially useful.

When comparing this with "Invasive_Plants. Weeds of the Global Garden" it would seem logical that at more than three times the price this book would offer considerably more. It does offer more text, and color pictures that are a little bigger. In addition there are small maps of California, showing distribution and small line drawings. This book would gain in accessibility if each new species started on a new page, if the line drawings were of a size and quality more aimed to facilitate recognising the species and if a more consistent format of color picture had been used, preferably showing some characteristic details.

By the way I do worry about the way both books recommend the use of herbicides like glyphosates (roundup and the like): it sounds as if the cure may be worse than the plague.