Book Reviews: Trees of Northern Florida

The flora of Florida is more diverse and in many respects more interesting than that of any other state in eastern North America, and yet it is quite inadequately treated in published form. No book yet written has been dedicated to the task of bringing together and summarizing current knowledge of the state’s flora. That person, either professional or advanced amateur, who desires to identify with precision some member of the vascular flora of Florida has little choice but to grope through the intricacies of J. K. Small’s Manual of the Southeastern Flora, fully aware that mastery of its taxonomy may still leave him bemused by its obsolete and elsewhere almost forgotten American Code nomenclature. Or, if he is fortunate, he may find that a modern monograph covers the group in which he is interested, and his problem is simply one of discarding the irrelevant verbiage of extra-territorial species.