Growing Beautiful Houseplants: An Illustrated Guide to the Selection and Care of over 1,000 Varieties

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive guide.
Review: This work contains more USEFUL information onhouseplants in one volume than you might find in ashelf of other books.
The author starts with basic understanding of the plants and explains them as broad and useful categories; e.g., flowering plants, foliage plants, bromeliads, succulents, and orchids. Then follows brief but comprehensive essays on bulbs and tubers, bonsai, greenhouses, window plants, planters, and the physiology of plants with particular attention to the necessities of light, soil, temperature, dormancy periods, diseases, and other essentials.
Then follows the heart of the book; a compendium of over 1,000 varieties of houseplants, most illustrated in color photos, and here's the genius of the work: each listing gives the necessary care in detail, with propagation details, light requirements, optimum temperature, water needs, humidity, and preferred soil. Try finding all that in one other book!
The last section groups plants in tables such as "plants that need half shade", "plants that require a dormant period", "plants for an office", etc., for very handy reference. A good index is provided wherein plants can be found by the folk names not otherwise used in the book. (The reasons are carefully explained by the author, but they would be fun to have anyway).
This work, originally published in the Netherlands, has sold over 200,000 copies in Europe, and it is easy to see why: if you follow the recommendations, you can hardly fail, even if you have had a "brown thumb" in the past.
(The numerical rating above is a default setting within Amazon's format. This reviewer does not employ numerical ratings.)