Here is a new, standard, and comprehensive text and field guide to the flora of Illinois, for the botanist and ecologist, amateur or professional.
Robert H. Mohlenbrock, editor of the "Illustrated Flora of Illinois" series and a foremost authority on the flora of Illinois, has here provided a new up-to-date manual for those wishing to identify the state's vascular plants. This guide contains the most complete list of plants to date-- "additional taxa" given at the end of the book name 21taxa discovered since the manuscript went to press--and recognizes varieties, subspecies, and forms.
Divided into five parts, the book first provides a discussion of topography and distribution of plants contained in the study The Natural Divisions of Illinois, prepared by the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and reprinted here in its entirety. A map showing the fourteen natural divisions is included.
Mohlenbrock also provides the general keys enabling the user to determine family names, and provides also keys to the 3,047 taxa of plants in the state. The data supplied for each taxon give the common name, if there is one, the months when flowering plants bloom, the habitat, geographical distribution, and, for very rare plants, the counties in which they have been found.
In convenient-size format for use as a field guide (a centimeter scale is printed on the endleaves), the book will be useful also as a textbook in high school as well as college and university classes.
About the Author :
Robert H. Mohlenbrock taught botany at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for thirty-four years, obtaining the title of Distinguished Professor. After his retirement in 1990, he joined Biotic Consultants as a senior scientist teaching wetland identification classes in twenty-six states to date. Mohlenbrock has been named SIU Outstanding Scholar and has received the SIU Alumnus Teacher of the Year Award, the AMOCO Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Meritorious Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of Southeastern Biologists. Since 1984, he has been a monthly columnist for Natural History magazine. Among his fifty books and more than five hundred and sixty publications are Macmillan’s Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, Field Guide to the U.S. National Forests, and Where Have All the Wildflowers Gone?
