The Sibley Guide to Trees

I purchased this guide book for an extensive trip to the Southwest. Like Sibley’s Guide to Birds, the illustrations in this guide to trees are unparalleled. The leaves, bark, nuts, etc, are beautifully illustrated. I have not seen any other guide that comes close to this. The illustrations are in color and give great detail in some cases showing you both the young bark and older bark, since younger tree bark can look very different. Illustrations of fruits, nuts, flowers, leaves, are all in color and consistently gives you multiple images so you can see variations. Additionally, the distribution maps showing where species occur are nicely done, and the written descriptions for identification are concise and clear. Thank David Allen Sibley for giving us a great field guide to trees.

This is an amazing book. It is not the most comprehensive guide, but covering more the most common half of tree species in North America, it would be quite unwieldy to tote around if Sibley were aiming at completeness. Sibley has arranged the trees by families, which is quite convenient for narrowing down what you are trying to identify. However, what makes this book such a fantastic companion is how he can pack the most relevant information, mainly in pictorial form, about each tree in a page or two. The illustrations of leaves (often both sides, some in fall colors), bark, twigs, seeds, nuts, acorns, flowers, etc. are geared to helping make a rapid identification. By using pictures, instead of lengthy descriptions, you can instantly compare the tree you are looking at to the species in the book. If you are interested about the trees in your back yard, the local park, or hiking through the forest, this guide can help you find out what you are looking at. Knowing the name, can then be the spring board to find out more our leafy friends.

I love this style of book, wish it came in hardcover

Interesting

It's a beautiful book with great drawings of trees, bark, leaves, flowers, seeds, etc. Each tree has a thumbnail map of the United States showing where it grows. There's tidbits of information along with some great, nerdy-sounding words and descriptions. For example, "The Swamp White Oak is deciduous... with dark twiggy tufts looking coarse and unkempt. Distinguished from similar species by sparsely-toothed leaves, small buds, scaly bark, and whitish underleaf." Unfortunately, if you're standing next to an unknown tree with this guidebook in your hands, you'll probably be standing there for a while. This book is organized by plant classification (order, family, genus, species). My goal is to learn the names of the trees that grow in my area. I bought this book because I thought it looked nice (and it does), but it doesn't quite meet my needs. After I bought the book, I discovered a local arboretum where each tree has a name tag plus the year it was planted. I can go there to learn the names and to see how they grow in my area. I can take pictures at the arboretum and then go home to use Wikipedia where I can access much more detailed information than this book can provide. I'm glad I bought the book because it's a nice addition to my bookshelf. But the local arboretum plus Wikipedia are more useful for my needs.

Useful, beautiful, full of great info and makes a lovely coffee table book too. I bought it for my daughter and she loves it!

I received first book in an over sized box as pictured. Cover open and bent, packed with cans and other hard items. I chose return - replace, the second book arrived in an individual package in even worse shape . Beautiful illustrations and detailed descriptions as I expected. Planned as gift but can’t give wrinkled Buy this book from local vendors

This book is an excellent reference for learning to identify trees. Very well illustrated in color, showing leaf shapes, bark types, and views of the entire tree. The author also has maps of north America showing which regions various species of trees grow in. This book is virtually an encyclopedia of knowledge about trees of north America.