In the birding world, at least at the moment, the Sibley book is considered the bible of identification. Is there a similar book (or contenders) that cover the significant majority of the conifers I'm liable to run across? I generally range from Arizona through California, Oregon, and Washington, if that matters. I've run across several smaller books that seem to leave out a great many of the conifers that have been planted in cities and towns, and only wish to deal with "native" trees. I'd like to find something much more inclusive.
Also titles by Keith Rushforth, particularly Conifers (Helm 1987 ISBN 074702801X; out of print but 2nd-hand copies sometimes available)
Thanks for the suggestions. RonB, what do you mean by "the bird guide look"? I'll look for the Mitchell books in a few weeks when I'm at Powell's in Portland.
Read it again: bird guide format. A few of his books are like bird guides, but show trees instead. Rushforth's book isn't like a bird guide, however.
I forgot about this one, which came out last year. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/glance/-/books/0007139543/026-7841291-8382858
Ron, The Collins Tree Book, which the link pointed to, is for Britian and Europe. I'm hoping for something to cover the west coast of the US I'll definitely be looking for the Mitchell and Rushforth titles, however.
This is a good book to have as it covers a lot of native Conifers that will be seen in the Pacific Northwest also - Conifers of California by Ronald M. Lanner. Jim
The climates of the two areas are broadly similar, so what can be grown is much the same. Virtually all of the western American native conifers are in UK tree books, as they are all planted over here, to a greater or lesser extent. Just don't rely on any abundance data the books give, as they won't match (e.g. Abies lasiocarpa, Torreya californica and Pinus sabineana are planted over here, but aren't at all common - they are in the books, though). The only western American native conifers I can think of which aren't in these books are one or two of the rarer Cupressus like Cupressus bakeri (which you'll find in Ron Lanner's Conifers of California)
Mitchell and Rushforth are also British. Rushforth's book is not organized like a bird guide, isn't even illustrated very much. The tree mix is basically the same out here as there, much more so than elsewhere in North America - plus the calibre of domestic publications is usually considerably less. If you still want what you asked for originally - a bird guide-style tree handbook that includes planted species found on the West Coast - the ones I mentioned will be your best bet. Next you will have to track down a domestic source, that perhaps will be the biggest problem.
Jim, According to Amazon's description, Conifers of California is "entirely devoted to the state's native cone-bearing trees and shrubs". It sounds like a good book, and I'm likely to get it, but what I was hoping for was something that would also include the many planted conifers I find. For a relative beginner, it is very difficult to know if a given tree is native, so I don't know whether I should expect to find it in the book.
If it's any help, Alan Mitchell's Field Guide to the Trees of Britain and Northern Europe includes 170 species of conifers. The taxonomy is getting decidedly dated now though. Rushforth's Conifers covers over 500 species, though as Ron says, not heavily illustrated nor with identification keys.
If you want to better know which specialty Conifers you are seeing or transplanted Conifers such as the Aleppo Pine then you are on your own. You will have to learn Conifers the hard way like most of us as so many of the cultivated Conifers are not adequately pictured in the books. Even then some of the more outstanding books on Conifers have some problem areas as far as the name matching the plant. I don't see anything wrong with knowing the native trees as then when we know them well we should have a good idea as to what is a cultivated Conifer. An across the board Conifer book dealing with the dwarf forms, semi dwarf forms, cultivated, species, subspecies and native forms will not be found. Some of the better books just on dwarf Conifers show less photos in them than there are on one hand. That is one reason why looking at various web sites such as conifers.org and the Conifer Society web page and others becomes so important to us as we can finally see a photo of the tree to which we know or knew of the name. There have been some Conifers named or cited in this forum to which photos of them just are not out there. Even still, a photo of let's say, Pinus thunbergiana 'Beni ogon janome kuromatsu' will most likely not be seen in digital form (although I could scan in an image from an old Yokohama catalog but I am not going to do it). Even then, will the photos be representative of the plants in Japan in which the variegated part of the needle will turn a brilliant rose pink in the Winter. Seldom seen here but a friend I gave one to in Beaverton, Oregon, gets to see the coloring about every other year. There is a reason why we will not always agree with Conifers as we had to learn them from the ground floor and the ones we know, especially the specialty plants, are ones we are in no mood to hear or read someone tell us we were wrong about how we learned them. Even Sir Harold Hillier and Humphrey Welch did not always see eye to eye on what a true dwarf Conifer was. I have a Pinus nigra 'Hornibrookiana' that is 20' tall now that at one time was listed in a prominent book as being a dwarf. A 20' tall dwarf, what is wrong with that picture and some of the ones still at the nursery are taller than mine but I am referencing 40+ year old Pines as well. Even some of Koto Matsubaras cutting grown Cryptomeria japonica 'Yoshino' were over 30' tall. How large is the one shown in the Van Gelderen Conifers book? I am talking light years for a difference in the plants I know well and the one pictured in the book. I wish it were not so now but it used to be that in order to stay in tune with the cultivated Conifers would require us to have lots of nursery catalogs in our possession. Now, we may see a variety of names attached to the same plant that was not so much the case in years past. Knowing the source of the Conifer has become even more important in which we know by the name which nursery or nurseries are growing and selling it. Even if the plant is not what it truly is supposed to be. We see this much more rampant in specialty plants. So going out with book in hand may not help you when you see an akamatsu such as Pinus densiflora 'Alice Verkade' in a private garden in Portland or at Filoli Garden in Woodside. Jim
Dwarf variants acquire vigor when grafted onto seedling rootstocks. So, descriptions they may be sold under - at least for awhile - are correct for the original specimen, but may not be for the propagules. Other largish examples are just old, being slow-growing rather than dwarf (as in staying tiny indefinitely). Some rhododendrons will grow into trees, too, over the course of 50-150 years. The British/northern European targeted tree field guides cover most of the important planted trees in Pacific Coast cities, north of California. Of course there will be numerous cultivars, as well as spontaneous seedlings of some species, such as Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, that will defy identification. But even with this overplanted species (over 50 treelike cultivars alone known or likely to have been encountered by 1995) there will also be certain highly distinctive ones that are shown and discussed, readily recognized.
Jim, Thanks for the long post. I hope my questions haven't irritated you. I completely agree that there is nothing wrong with learning the natives and leaving the many planted species for later learning. My problem: frequently I choose a tree that does not appear to be planted, struggle to identify it, fail, and then find out it is not a native. I'm heading back to Portland in a few weeks, and during my visits there I've been spending time at Reed College. They have virtually all of their trees identified and mapped on the web. I've learned a lot by picking a few species out for each visit, going to find the particular example trees, and studying them for a while. Perhaps doing that, together with some of the books suggested here, will help me get to know the natives.
Hi Pete: I tried to learn the natives near me first and then branched out to cultivated Conifers, mainly Pines, as I already had a collection of Pines going prior to my searching out to learn the nursery standard Conifers and later onto other specialty Conifers. Just dealing with nursery standard Conifers can be tough as we cannot rely solely on the books to help. Pocket sized field guides are nice to have once we know what we are seeing but what we see pictured in the books does not always jive with what we are seeing in the books for the barks and cones on some of the younger Conifers. We have to try to learn what these plants are when we see them (just as you are doing) and know who to ask when we see a Conifer we are not sure about. Don't ever be afraid to ask for help as even some of the more common Conifers for us in our various locales will not be so common to other areas. It is a huge mistake to think that even common forms of Pine seen in Washington will look the same as they do here in California. Where I get irritated is when people that claim to know Conifers or give the impression they really know them have not seen enough of them to know my above statement is more than just accurate. As an example: look at the plating on the Pinus ponderosa in the Botany Photo of the Day and then ask why ours down here do not have the same bark color or that degree of plating as that one shown. Ours are much darker in color with less plating and have more red coloration. When people in Europe have to get out their books to know what we have out here, they are in trouble but so are we when we are in Europe and other areas such as Japan unless we've seen these plants before and know them. That is one reason why people rely on the cones for identification so they will not have to subject themselves to the differing physical attributes of why their Pines may look different than they do grown elsewhere or found in native settings. All the books mentioned so far are worth having. It all comes down to us and how much we want to learn Conifers. Also, it becomes a matter of what do we want from the books. All I did was let you know that what you want for information is what many of us wanted also at one time or another. I share how and what you are feeling as I've been there also. Trying and wanting to learn more about plants, even specific Conifers is not ever something for me to get irritated over. I am still learning these plants myself. It takes a lot of time and involvement to learn what is "out there" for Conifers and as soon as we think we know something, we will soon learn we do not know anything yet in the large spectrum of things, no matter who we are. Jim
