Books on Plants
The books on this page include technical botany books (such as regional floras) as well as picture books that are useful for the traveler, amateur and professional botanist. We find it sad that many of the books that included good photographs or illustration, as well as, useful information on plants are now out-of-print.
If you would like to purchase any of the books directly from our website please click on the book title to get the price and ordering information.
The Jepson Manual of Higher Plants of California
This is California's most recent complete state flora. This updates the original manual printed in the 1925. It also is a significant update over the previous flora A Flora of California by Philip A. Munz with supplement (1968). The new Jepson Manual was designed as a field manual and includes up-to-date keys for nearly 6,000 native plant species plus over 1,000 non-native plants. Two major improvements over all previous California floras are the alphabetical organization of the families, genera, and species; and the numerous high-quality line drawings. There are line drawings representing every genus and representative species including all rare plants. The plant distribution information is based on 50 biogeographic regions of California. For those used to older floras that used county distributions or major mountain ranges the new system takes some getting used to. The lack of flowering times is disappointing. Also, the index is incomplete with respect to all the species in the book. So if you know the genus and species, but not the family of a plant and want to look it up, it may not be possible. As a field book this hardback is quite heavy (over 5 lbs.). Nevertheless, this flora is indispensable for the professional and amateur botanist, and natural history enthusiast. Despite the fact that one of us (N. McCarten) made a small contribution to this flora, the book remains useful.
Collins Photo Guide: Wild Flowers of East Africa
Author: Sir Michael Blundell