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The
Vegetative Key to the British Flora ISBN-10:
0956014402 John
Poland | ||||
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The
Vegetative Key to the British Flora
Rarely does a book arrive which breaks completely new ground, but the Vegetative Key to the British Flora may be one such. It is 'a striking new approach to the identification of nearly 3,000 wildflowers, grasses, sedges, trees, shrubs, ferns and fern-allies to be found native, naturalised or casual in the British Isles.' It is 'a manual that enables reliable identification at any stage of growth beyond that of the cotyledons' - you don't need to see the flowers to ID the plant! In short, this may be the book of which many naturalists have been dreaming. It's a bold claim, and one that has been made before, for limited groups of plants. Rose's Wild Flower Key was enterprising in offering vegetative keys for many wild plants, but fewer than the 1600 shown in the main guide, and the plants are initially indexed by habitat which is often inconvenient; the BSBI Plant Crib has some vegetative keys, too. So how does this manual measure up to our ideal? Is it handy,
simple and accurate? Yes and no - hardly surprisingly. In order to contain so
many species this is a lengthy book - 526 pages, plus 24 colour plates, and a
little larger than the standard pocketable field guide. To make it handy, the
paper is thin, which may limit its life. You may want to buy a few for the future!
But the print is clear, the many black-and-white illustrations are large and reproduced
well, and the book opens flat for easy reference. There is a millimetre scale
on the back, the front cover contains a colour plate of leaflet types, the back
cover types of leaf base, and the very first page is a Key to Major Divisions.
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One gets the impression that this guide has been designed by people who know what a practical reference manual needs. The keys themselves use multiple characteristics to point you in the right direction - there are no lengthy dichotomous keys as often found in botanical books - and the species, once attained, is described and characteristics sometimes illustrated. The keys identify to species level, and sometimes to sub-species. An enthusiast should, it is claimed, be able to arrive there with just three turns of the page. A perfect product, then? Possibly, within limits. This is a book for the informed enthusiast or the professional. There is an extensive Glossary, and just as well, since such terms as 'colleters' and 'sympodial' are not part of common speech and few of us these days have the benefit of a Latin education. This is unavoidable, of course,in order to avoid constant re-definition. Some plants simply cannot readily be keyed - but these are few indeed. Hybrids present problems, but then they always do. More relevant is the requirement to use the book in the field - much use is made of scent, the presence of latex, etc. - characteristics which may not be available if the plant is taken home. Some may regard the need to cut plants in much the same way as we now see older book's requirements to dig them up, to see if they have tubers, for instance. Apart from its advertised function, this key contains a lot of new knowledge about our plants - 'all the keys have been written from personal observation of fresh material. Literature has not been copied blindly' say the authors, and give as an example the oft-repeated characteristic of Yellow-horned Poppy as containing yellow latex - 'this is simply not true.' There is a lot of other new information: comfrey flowering times are given as much longer than those often quoted, for instance. So users will learn a lot by using this Key. This book will alter the way we look at plants. All the new information can only improve identification, for botanists, ecologists and any naturalist. Perhaps now we should be looking for a new field guide, which presents all the old, and all the new, information together, with pictures?
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