Customer Reviews

Wild Orchids of Florida: with References to the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains

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3 star:		(1)
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I had been hoping for a Florida orchid book for a long time to help me understand and identify native orchids. This book goes beyond my expectations. It is wonderfully thorough, with each species covered on two full pages. One page describes the distribution, identifying characteristics, habitat, flowering period, and has a Florida range map and plant illustration. The facing page has several photographs of the plant, showing growing habit, flower close-up, and different color forms. I particularly appreciate the range maps identifying all the Florida counties where the plant has been found. I was able to easily go through the book and make a list of all the species found in my area. The photos are very good and the variety of scales really helps. Reading this guide, it seems like there are orchids all around just waiting for the trained eye to notice them. A must have for your field guide collection.

The book is well done and put together. The only issues I noted are that the author does not give photogrpahic credit to several contributors. Least of which is Carlyle Luer. The author has used several copied photos right from Dr. Luers "Native Orchids of Florida" without permission or proper credit.

Some of the taxonomic changes and listing are not as accurate as they could be, but the overall work is complete and covers all known species to occur in Florida. One helpful note, future books should follow the Luer style for various stories and all photos should have dates taken and county listings.

I love the colorful names of orchids (green adder's mouth, ghost orchid, gentian noddingcaps). This guide covers native and naturalized orchids in Florida plus introduced, escaped and waifs.
The detailed descriptions (1 page each) and multiple photos of each orchid were very helpful. The description gives the origin, details to identify the plant, the leaves, the flower, habitat, flowering period and a paragraph of additional information relating to the rarity of a plant. A map shows the counties where it might be found, plus a drawing of the plant is included.
It contains handy resources like a 9-page checklist,orchid statistics, a glossary, 16 pages clearing up confusion over misapplied names and synonyms, and a bibliography.

For those that live in Florida, and an Orchid enthusist, this is the best book on wild orchids that I have encountered. It has very good photos of the orchids, and could be a coffe table book if you want. It even lists the counties, and growing areas of the plants