Customer Reviews

Orchids of Western Australia

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

 

 

This book fails to meet my expectations for either a field guide or a flora; both share the purpose of allowing one to attach a name to a plant. The illustrations are lovely, but the discipline of making them all the same scale and failing to include floral details makes them useless in too many cases. Many of these plants have very small flowers, e.g., Drakea, Corybas, Microtis, and the drawings of the flowers end up being truly tiny, way too small to afford a useful amount of detail. As an example, each illustration of a species of Corybas, plant and flower, is about 1.5 cm square! This will never replace Nicholls (Orchids of Australia), and does not begin to compete with the series issued by Melbourne Universtity Press (The Orchids of Victoria, The Orchids of Tasmania), which manage to convey far more detail in their photographs. This is a pity, because I think the floral details would have been as beautifully done as the whole plant portraits, and would have made this book useful and more beautiful as well.

this long awaited book lives up to expectations.

It's a beautiful book with great paintings by Patricia Dundas. even you're not interested in orchids, this book is just worth it for the drawings.

From the "guide" side, it contains the latest described species and a small description of each. The drawings being all at the same scale are very useful for the determination. Unfortunately it is too big to take on the field and it's lacking a determination key.

Overall a superb book I recommend to anyone interested in plants in general and orchids in particular.