This accessible, comprehensive glossary covers all the descriptive terms for plants that one is likely to encounter in botanical writing, including everything from magazine articles to plant field guides, scientific papers, and monographs. An essential companion, it presents 3,600 botanical terms, accompanied by full definitions and detailed illustrations to aid in identification, all laid out in a clear, easy-to-use fashion. It will be indispensable for plant scientists, conservationists, horticulturists, gardeners, writers, and anyone working with plant descriptions, plant identification keys, floras, or field guides.

If asked to describe a plant, many of us would have to resort to basic descriptors such as vague shapes or simple colors. But for those who work and write in the plant world, there are thousands of terms available for crafting the perfect characterization. A pear’s shape can be called pyriform, while lemon’s form is prolate. A petal might range from caesious (pale blue-grey or -green) to ceraceous (pale cream) to cinerous (ash grey). And the autumnal spread of fallen leaves is called, elegantly, leaf litter.

The Kew Plant Glossary is a comprehensive guide to the myriad of terms used in the identification and conservation of plants. This new edition adds more than four hundred new entries, including a vegetation-type section, bringing the total to 4,905 botanical terms and seven hundred illustrations. The terms are clearly explained, many with basic line drawings to further clarify a description. Henk Beentje consulted a host of botanical works as well as colleagues working in the field to create a glossary that is clear, easy to use, and free of confusion. He notes terms that are easily mixed up with others and points out phrases that are considered outside common usage.

This is an essential companion for anyone who finds themselves searching for the right word when writing about plants, who needs to clearly identify the pieces of their work, or who just wants to talk more authoritatively about the plants they love.

The Kew Tropical Plant Families Identification Handbook is an authoritative guide to the commonly encountered and ecologically important plants of the tropics. Written by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this handbook is based on Kew’s popular Tropical Plant Identification course, which uses classical morphology, as well as more simple “spot” characteristics, to teach plant identification.

This fully updated second edition adds seventeen new family and subfamily descriptions and includes updated research throughout. Each of the one hundred families is described in detail and richly illustrated with photographs that show important identification characteristics. The book’s emphasis on images and the foundations of identification means that both specialists and nonspecialists alike will be able to use this guide.

The Kew Tropical Plant Families Identification Handbook is a portable, easy-to-use resource, perfect for tropical botanists as well as students and conservation professionals.

This comprehensive guide includes taxonomic keys to the families, genera, species, and infraspecific taxa of all the known vascular plants of Arkansas.