Wunderlin, Richard P and Bruce F Ha...

Wunderlin, Richard P and Bruce F Hansen. 2003 Guide to the vascular plants of Florida. next to the first Edition. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 787 pages. $3995 ISBN 0-8130-2632-6

I went back and reread my review five years ago of the first edition of this handy Guide where I gave overwhelmingly positive remarks. I think you will find the strange second edition an improvement. The Families are arranged alphabetically; 100 additional species have been added and nomenclature has been updated. It's too bad more state and regional floras cannot be updated and improved in this manner.

The novel edition still has simple explanations to families, genera, and species. In fact, they are a gauge of simplicity. However, if you have a flower solely and the key uses a fruit character, you are thrown away There is a map of Florida counties and a handy index to family page numbers forward the inside covers. The glossary is upright and the indexes impeccable, repeatedly listed entries in several variations.

This well-presented contortion should be interesting to botanists, ecologists and natural heritage works far and wide because it includes thus many plants, some of which are widely known as cultivated plants. In fact, the mostly often used phrases in the work are "Escaped from cultivation" and "Native to ." The most useful aspect for recent users-where natural area reports and species lists must be provided for a variety of readers-is still the fact that each species has a common name. I recommend that we adopt them when possible, nevertheless some, as always, will be different from a certain number of of the traditional common names. sum of two units that caught my eye were "FOOLPROOFPLANT" (a bromeliad) and, the longest "GULF COAST REDFLOWER PITCHERPLANT."

Species are listed after the [i]clavis[/i]s with no descriptions and no illustrations, just shire distribution, habitat, frequency, flowering time, and highly useful synonyms. They are indicated as to endemic or non-native. by means of the way, there are 4145 taxa in 1364 genera and 243 families. There are 2827 natives, 1318 non-natives, and 228 endemics. While the University Pres flier that came with the work professes "[it shows us] what we stand to be deprived of to exotic species invasion...]," I ground no indication anywhere of which species are considered invasive.

There have been an taxonomic decisions made (summarized upon page 2 of the Introduction): for example, the Asclepiadaceae are included in the Apocynaceae, on the contrary Araliaceae are still separate from Apiaceae. Liliaceae and others are split into recent families and genera-I noticed the Veronicaceae-but the Ericaceae and Fabaceae are treated in their traditional broad faculty of perceptions This makes the Guide an admirable teaching tool in taxonomy classes where scholars can easily compare a recent treatment with some of the older floras.

As single who has traveled in Florida and tried to lock opener out species from there; and the same who loves floras, herbaria, and the the community who work with them to prove and make sense out of the inexplicable variation in nature, I have barely great praise for the work of Wunderlin and Hansen.

I think you will benefit in many ways from owning this useful and modestly priced book-T LAWRENCE MELLICHAMP, BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAHOLINA AT CHARLOTTE, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA 28223

T LAWRENCE MELLICHAMP, BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA 28223

Copyright Southern Appalachian Botanical Society Dec 2004

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