National Wildlife Federation field guide to trees of North America

There is much to like about this guide. It passed this reviewer's first test by including common, nonnative species found in parks, campuses, and street sides and increasingly naturalized elsewhere. An amazing amount of good information is packed into a portable, very attractive, inexpensive single volume. The color photography is uniformly excellent, as are the much less frequent line drawings. Most native trees have maps depicting their geographic distribution. In addition to the descriptions of 700 species, environmentalist/ecologist Kershner (deceased) and colleagues provide short essays on tree function, ecology, forests of North America, forest threats, and more. A well-illustrated glossary explains necessary terminology while omitting the more obscure botanical lingo. The guide's main drawback is that the simplified keys to finding the names of unknown trees start with leaf shape and arrangement, then move to fruit characteristics, which will prove problematic since fruit are often either not present or not accessible. This reviewer questions the need for a single book covering so much territory, when regional guides can devote more space to each species. Further, line drawings can be much better for identification than photographs. Minor criticisms aside, this work should be welcomed by naturalists, resource managers, arborists, and others who need to identify trees. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers/libraries. G. D. Dreyer Connecticut College