Northern Chihuahuan Desert Wildflowers [Paperback]

Steve West (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000 | Series: Wildflower Series

Field guide to more than 260 wildflowers conveniently arranged for easy identification. Includes vibrant color photos and descriptions.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Northern Chihuahuan Desert Wildflowers is the ultimate field guide to the flora of the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico and West Texas. This valuable reference enables all desert enthusiasts to identify quickly and accurately hundreds of Chihuahuan Desert plants. The easy-to-use guide features: More than 270 color photographs; precise descriptions of 261 species; habitat/range information; historical and cultural notes; an educational glossary; a complete index of scientific and common names; descriptions of national parks of the region. Author Steve West has spent more than 30 years studying the flora and fauna of this fascinating part of the country and has skillfully woven his own observations with those of distinguished botanists and fellow naturalists. The clear and concise plant descriptions and detailed color photos make this a great field guide for the layman as well as the botanist. More than a simple field guide, Northern Chihuahuan Desert Wildflowers is an invitation to discover this ecologically spectacular habitat. If Carlsbad Caverns, Big Bend, and Guadalupe Mountains are on your itinerary, be sure to take this indispensable guide along.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Falcon; 1st edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560449802
• ISBN-13: 978-1560449805
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Plants > Cacti & Succulents
  • #84 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Plants > Flowers

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Northern Chihuahuan Desert Flowers, November 21, 2010

By 

David Campbell - See all my reviews

This review is from: Northern Chihuahuan Desert Wildflowers (Paperback)

Steve West has done nature lovers a great service with his book Northern Chihuahuan Desert Wildflowers. It fills a need for a reliable and user-friendly guide to this amazing desert. The book covers a generous selection of the more common flowering plants of the region while remaining small enough to fit handily into pack or pocket. You'll find brief but adequate descriptions of wildflowers, trees, shrubs and the abundant desert succulents.

I will mention a couple of minor quibbles. West uses photographs as illustrations and they generally give a good overall view of the plants. But a single photo, or drawing for that matter, can't show the entire plant and at the same time highlight small or inconspicuous details. An occasional drawing would have been nice to emphasize diagnostic traits.

West's decision to group plants by flower color is fine and simplifies looking things up for non-specialists, but his system works best if the plant in question is in bloom. When botanizing at other times of the year the guide might leave us scratching our heads.

Finally, West has clearly made thoughtful and probably difficult decisions about what to include and what to leave out. The number of plant species one might encounter in the desert is large, over 1,500 within the United States alone. It would be impossible for a book of this size to contain all of them. So how can one be sure that the plant in hand is indeed the one described in the book and not one of perhaps scores of similar plants necessarily left out? Certainly the positive identification of closely related plant species can be challenging even for the specialist. In all fairness, West's book is not intended to be a complete botanical reference.

Over all a very well done and very useful guide to a fascinating world. Highly recommended.