An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, Vol. 3

An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, Vol. 3 by Britton, Nathaniel L.. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780486226446.

This monumental classic of botany remains unsurpassed as the most comprehensive and reliable work on the flora of the Northeastern United States and reliable parts of Canada. An encyclopedic collection of information, it illustrates and describes by botanists and growing wild from Virginia to the Northern reaches of Labrador, and as far West as Kansas and Manitoba. This second edition, materially revised and enlarged, covers 4666 species, identifying each species by its popular plant-names as well as by Latin nomenclature. The flora are systematically classified into two divisions or subkingdoms, Pteridophyta (ferns and fern-allies) and Spermatophyta (seed-bearing plants), and then into classes, orders, families, genera, species, and race. An eight-page analytical key helps the user locate any family of flora by its external characteristics (stamen, corolla, ovary, petals, etc.). The main body of the work is a species description (with an illustration of each species) of the flora — height, trunk diameter, coloration, leaf, flower, calyx, corolla, stamen, pistil, fruit, growth habits, fibro-vascular bundles, habitat, origin, season, and popular names. Extraordinary in their fullness and wealth of exact, specific detail, these descriptions are supplemented by a glossary of special terms, indexes of the genera in each volume, a general index of genera and species, and an English index including popular plant-names. Whether it is used as a student manual or as a ready means of comparison and identification of the plants that grow around us, this set will be found always useful and often indispensable. Students and teachers of botany, naturalists, conservationists, and nature lovers will use it as an unmatched lifetime reference source. While "Britton and Brown" has been recently rewritten, many students and nature lovers prefer this edition with its easily followed text and fine illustrations. This edition has not been superseded.