Bogs, fens, marshes, swamps, and the shores of lakes, rivers, and streams are all home to plants that love to have moist or downright wet soil for their roots to grow into. Wetland Plants of Ontario is a field guide to plants of those habitats. The book is illustrated with full color photographs and has accompanying black and white line drawings showing the entire plant, or illustrating leaf shape.
The books is divided into sections for woody plants (shrubs, trees); herbs (non-woody flowering plants); grasses, sedges and rushes; aquatics (grow directly in the water); ferns and allies (including horsetails, club mosses); and the Bryophytes (mosses). Each plant description includes general information, leaves, flowers, fruits, where the plant is found, and extra notes. I find these descriptions very thorough and easy to understand. There are identification keys for some of the plant groups.
This book is clearly written as a field guide to plants of specific habitats. It will be enjoyed by all plant lovers dwelling in Ontario or bordering States. If you live in these regions, this definitely should be found in your backpack on field trips and on your gardening bookshelf for reference.
Forest Plants of Central Ontario. Brenda Chambers, Karen Legasy, and Cathy V> Bentley. Lone Pine. 1996.
Lone Pine Publishing has produced yet another outstanding field guide to plants from specific habitats. Forest Plants of Central Ontario covers a very limited geographical region which is borders on the northern edge of Lakes Superior and Hudson. The excellent introduction discusses the various microhabitats and provides charts showing temperature ranges and precipitation amounts before the growing season starts.
I like the organization of the book. All plants are grouped by form: trees, shrubs, herbs, grasses, sedges and rushes, ferns and allies, mosses and liverworts, and lichens. I went through several of these divisions trying to discover the method for organizing the plants within each section. I could not discover the system. Each description provides the common name in French and English, the Latin name, and the family group. I expected to see the groups organized alphabetically by either the common name, Latin name or the family group. Frankly, I never figured out the system. The tree section, for example starts with the pine family. In my opinion, this book would be easier to use if one of the names was chosen to use for alphabetizing the descriptions. As it is, it is a guessing game as to where you will find the description for a particular plant even if you know one or more of its names. Each description gives a general statement about the plant, and then detailed descriptions of the leaves, flowers, fruits, habitat, special notes, and whether the plant is used for food by various animals. Each description contains at least one colored photograph and a black and white line drawing illustrating the plant.
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