Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region

Helps me in identifying trees, great pictures and information - beautiful book

Trees thrive all around us; but how much do we know about them? If you want to learn about your best friends and neighbors in a hurry, Elbert Little's field guide is a good way. I lived with a Black Walnut for 23 years before realizing my tall friend is the scarcest and most coveted of native hardwoods and was especially terrific for gunstocks. And I didn't know my two neighborly Common Persimmons were having a lovely relationship with one another (they must in order to produce the fruit), nor that their name was derived from the Algonquin. If you'd like to identify a stranger, Little's organization by thumb tabs based on leaf shape makes it easy to find the section where your tree is pictured with its leaves and bark in a full color photo. He also provides separate sections showing us flowers and fruit. You'll be charmed by an especially brilliant section showing red, orange, brown and gold autumn leaves. Who but a dendrologist, or tree identification specialist, would know so well how to share all this knowledge of trees? And Elbert Little is not just any dendrologist, mind you, but the former Chief Dendrologist of the U.S. Forest Service. What is a tree, really? According to Little, it's a "woody plant with an erect perennial trunk at least 3 inches in diameter at breast height, and definitely formed crown of foliage, and a height of at least 13 feet." That's good to know. If you love words (as I do), you're lucky to get a glossary with "lanceolate," "nutlet," "pith," "sepal," "stamen," and "whorled" fully explained. Besides a wealth of full color photos, the guide includes 400 pages of prose narratives and black and white diagrams describing the 315 native trees of the eastern two thirds of the continent arranged by family, as well as the common naturalized or introduced trees you'd be likely to run into in parks or cities. Here's a recommendation for you: walk in the woods for love of trees. "If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day," Thoreau tells us, "he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen." The danger of being regarded as a loafer is worth risking. Let this book be your companion. For all that's inside, it's amazingly small: 7.5" x 4" by 1" deep, with a soft laminated cover--perfect to fit in a jacket or backpack pocket. It's also great for lying on the ground and placing as a pillow under your head. To look up at the trees.

Great book

I found this book while trying to research some lesser-known plants from my area. I had already identified them using PlantNet, but I wanted to know what they could be used for, how to describe their shapes, etc. This book has been an invaluable resource and the small size makes it very easy to keep around and reference quickly.

I am an outdoor enthusiast and was looking for a quality field guide to help with the identification of lesser known tree species, primarily in the spring, summer and early fall months. I have a very good grasp on the basic species in my area but needed help with a few species that look VERY much alike, as well as trees that fall into the rarer category. As usual, I did as much research ahead of time as possible and ended up with three top choices. As I went through the reviews I found a reoccurring theme. The theme was that NO ONE FIELD GUIDE WILL MEET ALL YOUR NEEDS. Field guides are not textbooks and of necessity are not exhaustive because of size constraints. Each guide deals with this in its own fashion. Some are short on text and quality descriptions. Others are short on high quality pictures of leaf, bark, and general tree shape. Still others suffer from inadequate I.D. layout. After considering all the variables the three that ended up on the top of the list were: National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American trees (Eastern Region) (NAS), Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Trees (PFG) and National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Trees of North America (NWF). I live in Indiana so all three fit my location. On the upside, of the three guides the NAS has the best, clearest, and most detailed plates (pictures) of leaves and bark. It is also the most compact size of the three books mentioned. It can be carried in a standard cargo pants pocket. For use as a visual aid it is excellent. Its weakness lies in its poor layout and lack of logical ID method. I would not recommend this book as a PRIMARY identification guide. Because of its poor layout I believe it fits more of a backup role. I can't say that I am disappointed with it because I purposely purchased it with the intent that it would supplement the other book(s) I planned on obtaining. Out of the three books I purchased above I found the NWF to be the most useful and complete guide. I believe (IMHO) that it has the best combination and balance of all the areas I mentioned above. It is however the largest of the three and is not a pocket field guide by any stretch of the imagination. It is even a little heavy for my taste to take on an extended hike in a backpack. If the PFG had better graphics and pictures I would have rated it at the top. It is an excellent resource, but I just could not get past the poor graphics and lack of realistic pictures that the other two books provide.

I walk in the park quite often, and I like to take this book to identify trees there (for context, I live in VA). It's great! The book has exceptionally well-detailed pictures of leaves, bark, flowers, cones, etc. that do a great job identifying your tree of interest. It is very easy to figure out the classification scheme they use, and it takes no time at all to find a possible match to your tree. There are something like 650 pages (at least) of different species, and they describe them in great detail (e.g., each tree has a description of its leaf, its usual height, bark quality, flowers, etc.). Amateur dendrologists, pick this thing up.

We live in the mountains near the Blue Ridge Parkway. We always hike and wonder about what kind of trees we are looking at. This book has gorgeous color photos, descriptions and drawings to help you identify trees in our region. It’s really helpful that you can narrow down your possibilities in identification based on leaf shape, color, bark color and texture, kind of flowers, berries or nuts etc. Very informative and helpful. As a bonus the book is very attractive and feels special. Would make a nice gift for the nature lover.

Excellent guide. High quality full color photos of leaves, bark and flowers with a very well organized and smart system for figuring out what tree you want to identify by what you can see about that tree. It also helps you tell similar trees apart. Plus there is a section on how to use the guide that makes it very easy. Once you identify a tree, you can explore more information about that tree. Everything is indexed and cross referenced so you can easily get the information you seek quickly. We have identified many trees now with this guide and we think it's the best guide we've seen.

MISSING THE FRONT SLEEVE As an audobon collector I'm strongly disappointed for my book missing the main cover sleeve. It just looks awkward among my plant,rock,bird and other audoban books. And of course to just get a sleeve I have to return the entire book, something that's impossible for me to do while hospitalise so.... woooo. Everytime I look at my bookshelf I'll just be OCD annoyed. That aside I love the info and book in general. A perfect resource. Update: they GAVE ME A FULL REFUND for just missing the sleeve. I think I can let my OCD simmer when the whole book was covered because of this. Great customer service and a great reference to buy. Definitely will buy national Audubon books for years to come.

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Have these books myself - bought as gifts - wonderful resources

Great to take along on a hike

It definitely lives up to the reputation. Wonderful colour photos and descriptive entries. 10/10