Euphorbias: A Gardeners' Guide

Rating:
Summary: A great book !!
Review: If your interested in the fine details of botanical taxonamy and identifying / cultivating Euphorbia then this is a must for your collection. Euphorbia is a difficult genus to work with and the information in this work makes life a lot easier when keying out plant materials. Contains detailed drawings of seeds and fruits and color photo's of various plants. This work is relatively small but authoratative , detailed and has a permanent spot in my botanical library. A great dollar value. Note : covers Euphorbia under cultivation so may not cover most natives in your area but will give a good intro of Euphorbia terminology that will help in identification of any member of Euphorbia. There are not that many good works on Euphorbia currently in print so when you see one , " BUY IT " , this is one of a few ! Pages 188 , 47 color photo's , bibliography , bw drawings, index.

Rating:
Summary: for euphorbia specialist only!
Review: this book is about HARDY euphorbias (E), those that can be grown in a temperate garden. (Succulent enthusiasts be warned- not for you!) the 1st 2 or 3 chapters are of interest to any gardener but then to get into the meat of the book one needs some familiarity with botany & botanical terminology; What should be the most interesting part of the book- the A-Z of hardy E.in cultivation- is far too full of irritating detail useful only to the E. specialist & would not be usable (except by such enthusiasts) for the identification of an unknown species. There are 16 pages of beautiful photos of some 40 different species but,surprisingly, there is no reference to the text and when one does look up a particular plant there is noreference in the text to the photo. there are also some 20 line drawings shown in the list of contents but there is no indication of which page carries which drawing! only to be recommended to E. enthusiasts