Book Review

Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propagation and Uses by Michael A. Dirr. Stipes Publishing Company, 10-12 Chester Street, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA. Fourth edition, 1990. 1,107 pages, including an 18 pp bibliography, a 15 pp index by Latin names and a 17 pp index by common names. Hardcover, US$ 43.80; paperbadk US$ 32.80.

It’s rare that a tree’s appearance and landscape usefullness on the one hand, and its propagation on the other hand, are discussed on the same page of the same book. Dr. Dirr deserves thanks from us all for having taken this approach. We may thank him also for his numerous entrancing and well-documented comments based on botanical literature, e.g., his reference to Prince’s article on possible reasons for Franklinia’s disappearance in the wild and Orton’s article on attempts to hybridize Gordonia with Franklinia.

The book is organized as a single alphabet by Latin names of genera and species, something far and away more familiar and convenient for most of us than we’re likely to find in the USDA’s Host Index (which is organized by Latin Family names)! True, Dirr may give us no colorful photos (except his cover) but there’s a wealth of carefully executed line drawings - an average of one per page. And under a given species one finds up to 20 headings: family, leaves, buds, stem, hardiness, habit, rate of growth, texture, leaf color, flowers, fruit, culture, diseases and insects, landscape value, cultivars, propagation, native habitat, related species, and additional notes.

The fact that Dirr treats 300 genera with some 1,300 species or hybrid species, goes nowhere near telling the whole story. He also comments about a vast number of cultivars, which you’ll find listed alphabetically underthe appropriate species. For example, in Acer he discusses 38 species (and 2 subspecies). Yes, but under some of those maple species he also treats 153 maple cultivars (including 3 varieties and 1 forma).

Of the 300-500 possible crabapples that Dirr says might be distinguished by some one or other around the country, he describes - in one long alphabetical series - 208 named cultivars and varieties under Malus, pages 527-552. No wonder this valuable volume needs more than a thousand pages. (Francis Holmes)

• © 1992, International Society of Arboriculture. All rights reserved.