Produced by one of the world's leading botanical research centers, this is a luxurious technical handbook of plants. It is a taxonomic encyclopedia of every species, subspecies, and variety of vascular plant found in the drainage basin of the San Juan river, and the localities where they grow. As the San Juan is a major tributary of the Colorado, this book is a full accounting of what grows naturally in the US southwest, defined as the Four Corners region (the juncture of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah). This multidecade effort by more than sixty botanists has produced a catalog of probably the last major botanical region in the US not previously catalogued. In addition to taxonomic treatments of ferns and allies, gymnosperms, and angiosperms, the book includes information on the study parameters, geology and climate descriptions, plant communities and vegetation patterns, migration routes and influences, illustrations of vegetation associations and life zones, a key to the families of flora in the region, glossary, works cited, etc. While there are quality line illustrations throughout, some color photographs for identification in a rear section, and a few lovely illustrations in the front, this is a large work written in technical language for professionals and serious amateurs in botany and desert or North American plant ecology. Within those areas of study, this is a core book. Annotation 2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
