Customer Reviews

Trees of Texas: An Easy Guide to Leaf Identification (W. L. Moody Jr. Natural History Series)

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

 

 

First I must say that this work deserves praise. It really is a good book in many respects. The photographs are good. The region/county zones within a Texas map are detailed and useful. Each tree has one to several descriptive paragraphs about the tree including uses, growth rate, height, and sometimes a snipet of history.
You'd expect that though.
What you'd also expect but is unbelievably absent, are two of the three most important identification tools for identifying any tree ... a picture or drawing of the tree itself (!) and bark identification.
The only way to identify your mystery tree is if you have a leaf from it. Count how months in Texas our trees are leaf-bearing and subrtact that number from 12. The remainder is how many months this book sits useless on the shelf.
It's a shame too, because what IS in the book is well done. This would make an excellent companion book with any other that shows the actual tree (a glaring omission) and a close-up, or even a discription of, the bark.
Buy it if you can pair it with another book that gives you the other two pieces of the puzzle .... I haven't yet found it.

The format of this book, with its large detailed photos, makes identification easier than any plant book I've ever used. When I looked through a friend's book, I determined to get a copy for myself. The only thing I would change about the book would be to put 'native' or 'exotic' high on the page, but the information is in there.

One of the best features of Trees of Texas is the large pictures of leaves that can readily be used to identify species.

This is the only tree identification book I've been able to successfully use. I found it very easy to identify trees. As for not including a picture of the tree or the bark, there's only so much space, and the pictures of the leaves (and fruit/flowers in some cases) are great. And in Texas, the leaves are on the trees for most of the year, so I don't really understand why this represents a major problem.

Good practical guide with excellent black and white photos. If you want color you need something else.

I am a biology teacher and have brought this book into my classroom to help my students identify leaves for their project.

I especially like the lists of native trees that are found in each regions.

The photos of the leaves are really helpful.

The format of the book makes it very easy for young folks tackling this project.

This book helped me identify several trees in my backyard and surrounding area. This book is a lot of fun to look through, is educational, and is also very easy to use: Just pick up a leave take it home and flip open the three pages "key to leave shapes" which displays photos of sample leave shapes and then directs you the page numbers of corresponding trees. The leave and fruit/berry photos are of high quality and in actual size, unfortunately though in black and white (that is why I gave this book only 4 stars. I would have loved to see pictures of bark and a small drawing or photo of the tree itself. With no bark and tree shape pictures available, I had to wait patiently for leaves to come out in the spring before I could identify the trees. Otherwise easy to use even for kids and the botanically challenged...

This book is simply wonderful! In respone to the last critique by Jaynes that it falls short of being excellent due to the lack of tree bark identification, the authors never make the claim that the book is an exhaustive work on tree identification. Instead, it simply says (even in the title!) its purpose is to help one id Texas trees based on the leaves inherent in each.

W E L L- It would be real good if I could get it. I have yet to receive it.
As your note showed it was ordered a month ago and I had forgotten about the
order. Now I want the book or credit to my credit card. Now it is next to impossibe to get in contact w/ Amazon. I actually bought two of the same book.
One for me and the other for gift....Oh. well.