Customer Reviews

North American Trees: Exclusive of Mexico and Tropical Florida

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This 400 page book is a no-nonsense identification manual for north American trees exclusive of Mexico and tropical Florida (except for 35 species of hawthorn and 16 usually shrubby willows). It is adequately illustrated by drawings and distribution maps. Most of the species are described (habit, leaves, fruit, twigs, bark, general), some of the more uncommon ones are only mentioned in the keys. Although the book claims to use language as simple as possible I can imagine that it is the botanists who come to terms with it most easily.

A real drawback can be found in one of the introductory keys (species with toothed leaves) where the identification relies heavily on fruit characters. This is no doubt scientifically accurate, but not very practical in the field. A less rigorous, user friendly approach would be preferable.

I recommend the book to people with botanical training who will be happy to find the species arranged according to families and not according to the position of leaves. I liked the book because of its mostly very useful keys and because it presents all the north American trees in one easy-to-carry volume

The 5th edition has seen a complete revision of the illustrations, which all were replaced by a better grade of line-drawings. This makes for a much more likable book.

As a guide to the trees of N-America (exclusive of Mexico and tropical Florida) it seems obvious to compare it with Sargent's "Manual of the Trees of North America (exclusive of Mexico)", now available as a Dover-reprint. The present book appears an abbreviated and updated version of the earlier one, with distribution maps the most noticeable addition. However I find the earlier one definitely more attractive, if only because the line-drawings are so much clearer in the old book. In Preston's book the reproduction of the drawings is very black, and hence unclear.

When comparing this with the magnificent "Trees_of_Canada" by John Laird Farrar (aka "Trees_of_Northern_United_States_and_Canada") the book by Preston looks shabby indeed. The most kindly thing to be said would seem to be that this is vastly overpriced. Surely the USA can do (a lot) better than this for its trees?