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Identifying Trees: An All-Season Guide to Eastern North America

Michael D. Williams

4.14 · Rating details · 71 ratings · 7 reviews

Unique identification guide is effective, filled with color photos, and easy to use in winter, spring, summer, and fallField-tested by forestry expertsIdentify trees in any season, not just when they are in full leaf. This field-tested guide features color photos showing bark; branching patterns; fruits, flowers, or nuts; and overall appearance; as well as leaf color and s ...more

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Paperback, 416 pages

Published April 1st 2007 by Stackpole Books (first published March 1st 2007)

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Nov 25, 2013 Tim Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: botany, field-guide, nature, reviewed

This has rapidly become one of my favorite books for identifying trees. Though I have come to realize no one book can do it all in terms of identifying trees, this work comes pretty darn close.

Why the enthusiasm? First of all, it has a great format. The first section groups the trees by leaves, each with a full color photograph and accompanied by a line drawing, along with some description. Each species is under a broad, easy to understand grouping, such as opposite simple leaves or alternate co This has rapidly become one of my favorite books for identifying trees. Though I have come to realize no one book can do it all in terms of identifying trees, this work comes pretty darn close.

Why the enthusiasm? First of all, it has a great format. The first section groups the trees by leaves, each with a full color photograph and accompanied by a line drawing, along with some description. Each species is under a broad, easy to understand grouping, such as opposite simple leaves or alternate compound leaves. This section doesn’t require you to know what broad group or genus a particular tree leaf belongs to – say hickory or maple – though I think the reader will see with time (helpfully) that certain genera tend to fall all or mostly in one grouping.

Often bark is key to identifying many tree species, especially for example certain pines and many hickories. Here this book excels. In the main body of the text, each tree species gets on the left side of the page a full page of text – more than some other tree books – and on the right side a collage of good sized photos, including multiple photos of the bark, often of the tree from a distance and of the bark close up. Though often leaf pictures are included in the collage of pictures, the author used this page mostly for non leaf aspects of a tree, crucial to identification (including photos of seeds, fruits, nuts, and pinecones). I have spent much time pouring through photos of bark, trying to decided which species of a tree I had come across, and only had small field guide photos to work with, a single photograph in a given work to examine, or photos found online that weren’t always correctly identified or were mistakenly yielded from a search engine’s results. Here the photos are big, in color, and often of different trees to really bring out the crucial details in bark appearance and texture.

Though it doesn’t have pictures in the section, there is a quick ID chapter for trees in winter that I like. I haven’t used it yet, but coupled with the photos of bark, branches, nuts, etc in the main text, I imagine it would be of huge help. For the amateur botanist in winter it might be a very fun challenge.

The text often has some interesting tidbits about the species being described on that page, such as past and present usages for the woods, nuts, oils, etc from the tree, wildlife uses, use of the tree as an ornamental, etc.

There is a lot to be said about a field guide to well, anything, with a regional focus. Though there can always be something found from outside the region it is native to and those living in border areas might disagree, I think there is a lot to be said for a book focusing on EASTERN trees. Absolutely nothing against western trees of course, but a book focusing only on those found in the eastern United States allowed more space I think to be devoted to the species one is likely to encounter in that part of the country and remove from consideration very unlikely species.

A few introduced trees were included, something I liked, species such as Paulownia, Ginkgo, Chinaberry, and Ailanthus, trees an amateur is very likely to come across and but given short shrift by some field guides. Baldcypress and Pondcypress get separate pages – not always the case in many field guides – and I really liked that. This book had by far the best information and photos of Striped Maple – Acer pensylvanicum – of any book I have ever seen. Hackberry and Sugarberry were both given separate pages, one after the other; very helpful as the two can be hard to distinguish from one another (the same is true for its treatment of Northern Catalpa and Southern Catalpa, two other challenging species at times to differentiate). The coverage of oaks was fantastic.

I love the book and highly value it. The only slight – slight – problem I had was that there was no range maps, though the text descriptions of the ranges of the various trees is quite thorough and I don’t think the maps are really missed.
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Oct 02, 2019 Phil Greaney rated it it was amazing

An excellent book, very nicely done - clearly organised, well illustrated, succinct and direct. I've identified several trees on my patch with this book. It feels a bit wonky at times - trees don't appear where I think they might - but I'm willing to believe that is me.

We have plenty of sassafras, which I found difficult to identify at first (but looking now, it is obvious). Leaf id apps couldn't identify it - too generic, I think. The same with several red cherry trees I have - this book confir ...more

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Sep 13, 2018 Rachel Rogers rated it liked it

Useful tool for identifying trees by leaves, bark, growth patterns, and location. Would have been useful to universally show flowers and/or fruits of each as well. Helpful with preparing to teach elementary school children about trees this fall.
One thing that brought me up short was the description of one tree found in all the eastern states except Minnesota. Assuming the Rocky Mountains are the dividing line that makes sense, but living in CT I don't think of Minnesota as an eastern state. Pett ...more

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Nov 29, 2018 Andy rated it really liked it

Informative and pretty dense. A useful book for those looking to identify the trees they encounter.

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Sep 26, 2019 Sharon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2019

I never realized how many different trees grow in the eastern U.S.

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Aug 28, 2013 Tammy rated it it was amazing

I picked this up at the library for my husband. We both really liked the very detailed pictures of the trees, bark, leaves, nuts etc. He said he wouldn't mind owning this book. Soooo, I will put that on his Christmas list this year. :) ...more

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