Customer Reviews

Tropical Plants of Costa Rica: A Guide to Native and Exotic Flora

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I picked up a copy of this guide (published in San Jose by Zona Tropical) at La Selva last year and consider it a worthy addition to the small library I carry in Costa Rica. I would recommend it as the most useful single volume work on Costa Rican plants.

The guide is aimed at the amateur rather than the professional botanist: photographs are the prime means of identification, plants are presented out of family order (more below) and there are no keys. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to identify a good many of the country's commoner plants using this guide.

The order of the plants is:-

1. colourful-flowering trees
2. non-colourful-flowering trees
3. roadside and garden exotics
4. crop plants
5. living fences (so characteristic of Costa Rica)
6. special habitats, e.g. dry forests, cloud forests, beaches & mangroves
7. quintessentially tropical groups, e.g. bromeliads, palms & orchids
8. grasses

There is emphasis on those plants that are likely to be most conspicuous to the visitor. This often means a bias towards exotic species rather than natives. However, this does mean that the book is useful outside Costa Rica and I will be referring to it throughout the American tropics.

Once a plant is identified a comments section provides a host of useful information.

Well worth the price! I will definitely be taking it back with me on my next trip.

Chris Sharpe, 3 August 2007. ISBN: 0801473748

Willow Zuchowski and Turid Forsyth have created a beautiful overview of Costa Rican vegetation. The photography is wonderful, giving enough detail of individual plants that readers get an accurate sense of what they are looking at. The text has an interesting diversity of information, ranging from plant taxonomy to medicinal uses to pollination strategies. I used the book with a Tropical Botany class, and the students not only loved the book, but found it to be an excellent size which is easy to carry in the field or store in a backpack. The habitat descriptions are well-written and provide the reader with a good idea of what to expect in different parts of Costa Rica.

This is an outstanding publication. I was able to identify virtually everything I saw on our course to Costa Rica. I also appreciated the natural history under comments.

My only complaint is the weight of the book. If you are anything like me you will likely have other field guides, birds, herpes, etc. This book is pretty hefty and when added up makes travel cumbersome.

I live in Chiriqui, Panama which is very close to the border with Costa Rica. Considering the scarcity of information about this subject, the book is worth having along with The Field Guide to the Plants of Costa Rica by Gargiullo, Magnuson and Kimball. Both books lack keys and neither have the plants arranged in taxonomic order. Both have nice color photos but sometimes a good line drawing by a botanical artist is more useful in identifying an unknown species. In any case if you are interested in the flora of this area I would buy both of these books.

I got this book for my Mother, who is a naturalist. She said it was the perfect book to take with her to Costa Rica. It was easy to use and set up very well. The care-taker for the house they rented was so impressed with it that they left it for him and future guests.

Okay, I've only just received this book and have not had time to test it "in the field". However, I know people who have, and they say it's a great book, and that is my impression from just looking it over, as well.

It has tons of color photos and the pages aren't super thin, either. It looks like it will hold up well over time, and it is exactly what I was looking for!

I'm sure as I use it I will probably find things that could be better (maybe not?), but all I can say is it's a really big book with tons of info and lots of photos and it looks like it is just what I was looking for.

As the author of a travel guide to Costa Rica (Explore Costa Rica, Fifth Edition), which covers flora and fauna (in detai)l, I can attest that this is a great book to take with you and makes a superb companion to Explore Costa Rica (which will be a great help with the rest of your trip). Explore Costa Rica, 5th Edition (Explore Costa Rica)