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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prattw" data-source="post: 1809303" data-attributes="member: 73448">Tero,The hard truth about plants is that there are a lot of them! That national field guide is essentially useless, except for a once-over-lightly of the most common, obvious species.To give an example, the Peterson Pacific States field guide by Niehaus and Ripper includes 1492 spp. The guide includes all of California, Nevada. Oregon and Washington and parts of Idaho, Utah, and Arizona. Now, the current manual to California plants, The Jepson Manual, Higher Plants of California, James C Hickman, ed., includes 5862 spp, from just part of that area. Kartesz, Flora of Nevada includes over 3000 spp. a majority of which are not shared with California. At a (very) rough guess, there are nearly 10,000 spp of vascular plants in the area covered by the field guide.For comparison, there are fewer than 1000 spp of birds on the ABA area list, and it takes typically two volumes to cover them. The flower field guides cover species in much less detail. The Jepson Manual is 1400 pages of fairly small print, 8.5 x 11 x 2.2 inches. To cover its contents at the level of the Pacific States field guide would take 4 volumes the size of the field guide, and that would just cover California. To cover all the spp in the area covered by the Pacific States field guide would take maybe 10 volumes that size. For the whole of North American north of Mexico, maybe 20 volumes. Don't hold your breath.The situation, incidentally, is similar for Europe.That's why flower guides are typically for small areas, it's the only way they can be covered with reasonable completeness.Will</blockquote>

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