Customer Reviews

Trees of Michigan and the Upper Great Lakes

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This book is excellent for learning more about specific trees of the Great Lakes Region. It goes into much more detail than any field guide will ever tell you. The book spends 2 pages per tree, detailing the life history characteristics and typical habitats that the trees will be found in. I particularly like the fact that for each tree you can see a photo of the entire tree, as well as close ups of the bark and leaves (sometimes fruit too). The book provides satisfactory descriptions for identifying trees; however, does not provide any way to "key out" trees, so you must have some idea what you are looking at before you refer to the book. As a student in Ecology, I have found this book ten times more valuable than the price; however, I found that I needed an additional field guide to key out unknown trees in the field.

There are a lot of trees at Ives Road Fen Preserve in Southeast Michigan. This book provides detailed information on identification, history, habitat, pests and diseases, and economic uses of 81 species, along with multiple color photographs of each tree. It is excellent information for the trees covered but there are more than 81 species of trees in Michigan. The former title of this book was Michigan Trees Worth Knowing, making it more clear that it doesn't cover every tree in Michigan. I recommend this book for detailed information on the trees and Trees of the Northern United States and Canada for identification. That book contains information on 300 species, although some of them are only found in the west.

As a first time summer seasonal visitor to Northern Michigan, I was interested in learning about the trees of the area. This book is in color and makes it easy to identify the trees of the area. There also is useful information on the lifecyle of forests and history of the area from a fauna viewpoint.