Cyperaceae and the Gramineae. It resembles a souped up version of the Wild Flower
Key by Francis Rose and Claire O'Reilly - unfortunately however, unlike that Flora,
the mini-drawings of critical flowers and fruits are too small and faint in most cases to
observe easily in the smaller version, and in the larger format version the resolution of
the screen is too coarse to show the detail adequately. Having said that in the main, the
paintings of the flowers by the four artists Chistina Hart-Davies, Audrey Hardcastle,
Felicity Cole and Lizzie Harper are superb, and David has included their names in the
same font as his on the cover and the paper wrapper. Unfortunately, Parrot's Feather -
normally a lurid 'plastic' blue-green is the wrong colour, and the Willowherb paintings
have somehow failed to depict the characteristic forms of the species. The main
drawback that I think most people will find, is that having included the sedges and
grasses, the smaller version is now too thick and heavy to comfortably carry around,
The Wild Flower Guide being about three quarters the thickness and 'pocketable' -
but if you want the sedges and grasses included in a book to carry around with you,
you'll just have to put it in your rucksack!
The 3rd identification guide to appear, was the long awaited Mosses and Liverworts
of Britain and Ireland a Field Guide, edited by Mark Lawley (whose brain-child it
was) Ian Afherton, and Sam Bosanquet. Published by the British Bryological Society
in paperback with plastic sleeve (£31 Summerfield Books ISBN: 9780956131010). It
illustrates with coloured photographs some 75% of the British bryophyte flora which
can optimistically be identified in the field with a hand lens. Unfortunately, I feel that
while this might apply to the experienced bryologist, beginners are going to be hard
put to key out and identify many of the species. The text and illustrations are held
electronically, and it is planned to update and modify them for later editions and for a
web based file, so hopefully those descriptions which are not really definitive enough
to give certain identification can be improved. For the experienced bryologist the mostly
superb colour photos will prove very useful to eyeball what some of the rarer species,
they are always looking out for but have not yet seen, actually look like. For the beginner,
it will be essential to attend an introductory course initially, looking at bryophytes
with a microscope to familiarize them with the variation in cell shape, and such features
as costas and auricles and subtleties of leaf shape that they will be struggling to look
for under a hand lens. Otherwise the beginner will fall into the pitfalls of trying to
pattern match in Marjie Blarney style. Nevertheless it's proving popular, over 2,000
having been sold already, and will certainly raise the profile of bryophytes among
biologists who would otherwise find them too daunting. It's obviously proved popular
with someone, as having shown my copy to other members of the EFC in Norsey
Wood, and put it down in the crotch of a tree and left it there - it had been snaffled by
the time I went back to look for it!
Now to the new County Floras. First to arrive by a short head was Flora of
Hertfordshire by Trevor James in 21 x 30cm x 2.5cm hardback format with 518
pages and covering a period of survey from 1987 to 2005 and mapping 2,300 taxa of
18
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 62, May 2010