Botany in a Day is a different kind of plant identification book. It’s not full of colored photos and it’s not pocket-sized like the Audubon Field Guide to North American Wildflowers. What it does is teach the identification of plants by their family groups and, unlike many other botany texts I’ve looked at, it’s written to be accessible to a (slightly determined) amateur.
If you are interested in plant identification which goes beyond recognizing dandelions and thistles and you’re looking for something to add to your book collection this one might be for you. Botany in a Day is currently rated 4.5 stars at Amazon.com and is eligible for Super Saver Shipping.
To give you an idea of what you’ll find in this book, here is a breakdown of the various sections:
- Introduction – why you’ll find it useful to know about plant families and a brief explanation of how to use the book.
- The evolution of plants – pages 4-15 provide good background information with an accessible explanation of plant evolution. There are some really nice charts and illustrations which show not only evolutionary relationships between plant groups, but also the proportion of plants around today which belong to the different plant divisions and classes.
- Learning plants by families – pages 16 to 24 explain the plant families – mustard, mint, parsley, pea, lily, mallow, aster.
- Keys and how to use them – pages 25 to 36 consist of keys based on characteristics such as number of petals.
- Reference guide – pages 36 to 193 go through the plant families you’ll find in North America. They teach things like the fact that roses and strawberries are related. Once you understand this kind of thing it’s a lot easier to figure what kind of plant you are seeing out ‘in the field’.
- The medicinal properties of plants – pages 194 to 206. This section is really a taster of the types of medicinal uses of plants – it’s a starting point to entice you into learning more.
I recommend Botany in a Day if you want to learn more about how plants are related and would like to focus on learning broad groupings of plants to make identification of plants new to you easier.
I don’t recommend this book if you want a guide with colored photographs to take out into the field. For this I recommend the National Audubon Society Field Guide to American Wildflowers.
If you have any questions about Botany in a Day please leave a comment or send me an e-mail.
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