Choice Outstanding Academic Title Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for General Nonfiction Plants play a critical role in how we experience our environment. They create calming green spaces, provide oxygen for us to breathe, and nourish our senses. In The Nature of Plants, ecologist and nursery owner Craig Huegel demystifies the complex lives of plants and provides readers with an extensive tour into their workings. Beginning with the importance of light, water, and soil, Huegel describes the process of photosynthesis and how best to position plants to receive optimal sunlight. He explains why plants suffer from overwatering, what essential elements plants need to flourish, and what important soil organisms reside with them. Readers will understand the difference between friendly and hostile bacteria, fungi, and insects. Sections on plant structure and reproduction focus in detail on major plant organs—roots, stems, and leaves—and cover flowering, pollination, fruit development, and seed germination. Huegel even delves into the mysterious world of plant communication, exploring the messages conveyed to animals or other plants through chemical scents and hormones. With color illustrations, photographs, and real-life examples from his own gardening experiences, Huegel equips budding botanists, ecologists, and even the most novice gardeners with knowledge that will help them understand and foster plants of all types.

Flora of the Pacific Northwest, first published in 1973, became an instant classic for its innovative style of providing species descriptions in the identification keys, and for its comprehensive illustrations of nearly all treated taxa (species, subspecies, and varieties). Students rely on it as an essential primer, while veteran botanists and natural resource managers use it as the definitive reference for the region�s flora. This completely revised and updated edition captures the advances in vascular plant systematics over the decades since publication of the first edition. These advances, together with significant changes in plant nomenclature, the description of taxa new to science from the region, and the recent documentation of new native and nonnative species in the Pacific Northwest required a thorough revision of this authoritative work. Flora of the Pacific Northwest covers all of Washington, the northern half of Oregon, Idaho north of the Snake River Plain, the mountainous portion of western Montana, and the southern portion of British Columbia. It accounts for the wild-growing native and introduced vascular plants falling within those boundaries and includes: Treatment of 5,545 taxa (more than 1,000 taxa added from the first edition) Illustrations for 4,716 taxa (1,382 more than the first edition) Nomenclature changes for more than 40 percent of the taxa included in the first edition These enhancements make this new edition the most comprehensive reference on Pacific Northwest vascular plants for professional and amateur botanists, ecologists, rare plant biologists, plant taxonomy instructors, land managers, nursery professionals, and gardeners.

"Surely such a familiar landmark and its flora need no introduction. But leaf through the book (or better yet, get Brown and Choukas-Bradley to take you on a tour) and you realize that while the rest of the world has been looking at Sugarloaf through a telescope, this intrepid pair has been using a magnifying glass.... Their record of these trees and wildflowers] has become one of the most complete guides to local upland flora available, and they hope it will be used not just in other natural areas but in back yards where people want to raise native plants themselves."--Washington Post "In between a field guide and a botanical manual, Choukas-Bradley and Brown have created a must-have... to tote into the woods of Sugarloaf Mountain. The authors have included every flowering plant they observed during ten years of extensive hiking and exploration on Sugarloaf. This guide would be useful to any naturalist, serious or casual, venturing into the wilds of the Northeastern United States and adjacent Canada."--E-Streams "This book contains an easy-to-use, non-technical botanical key for flowering plants--herbaceous and woody alike.... The author describes each plant and its individual parts, all related species, and details on the plant's growth habit, its natural range and habitat, its bloom time, and where it can be found on Sugarloaf Mt."--Solidago: The Newsletter of the Finger Lakes Native Plant Society A thorough yet user-friendly companion to the authors' popular paperback Sugarloaf: The Mountain's History, Geology, and Natural Lore, this volume is an exquisitely illustrated guide to 350 eastern woodland wildflowers and trees found onsite at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland. It includes a botanical key and an illustrated glossary of common and scientific names, and is packed with nearly 400 elaborately and artistically detailed pen-and-ink drawings to make plant identification simple and fun. Melanie Choukas-Bradley is the author of City of Trees: The Complete Field Guide to the Trees of Washington, D.C. and a longtime contributor to the Washington Post. She teaches field botany for the USDA Graduate School. Tina Thieme Brown has worked as a landscape artist and environmentalist for twenty-five years. She teaches art at the U.S. Botanic Garden, is an artist on the Countryside Artisans Studio Tour, and creates art inspired by the Sugarloaf Mountain countryside in her 1790s log cabin studio. Choukas-Bradley and Brown lead Sugarloaf Mountain field trips for the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States and other organizations. Published in association with the Center for American Places

This comprehensive and authoritative handbook is for all those who want to portray plants and flowers with botanical accuracy. In it the author gives detailed advice on working in pencil, pen, scraper board, watercolour, acrylics and gouache; on building up a painting or drawing by stages; on taking measurements and understanding plant structure; on collecting, handling and preserving plant material.