https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G5rPU0F9STclg9mUNliDfkrj5rDLUsl3/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107627565738660665779&rtpof=true&sd=true INTRODUCTION Although nearly half a century old, Newcomb’s excellent wildflower guide is still in print and still in use. Over the decades since 1977—or rather since …

[image] lmtaylor: he omitted species that he thought too obscure or too difficult to identify, and the update list shouldn’t introduce any that he would have preferred to omit. I’ve found that it’s impossible to follow these idealized principles entirely, but they provide useful guidelines. Do y…

[image] ddennism: field guides, in my opinion, are kind of a waste of time I’d like to check how specific you are being here. Do you mean all “field guides” or just the ones for plants? I ask because field guides to insects, notably Jeff Skevington’s FGFFNNA and Chris Alice Kratzer’s The Soci…

Unfortunately I gave away my copy of Newcomb’s when I moved out of the Eastern US so I can’t really contribute to this.

[image] ddennism: they have all the entries children already know and none of the entries they need to know, in the misguided name of “ease of use”. That’s not fair. My Peterson wildflower guides introduced me to hundreds of species that I didn’t already know.

Oh, that’s a very interesting document. We used Newcomb a lot when we were new to Ohio and all the outdated names were an issue when we finally tried to start learning scientific names! [image] ddennism: they have all the entries children already know Haha, in our case we knew a total of 0 f…

“Small selection of flowers” is just a slight exaggeration… I can be more exact, because I have been combing sources to compile a list of pretty much every wild forb and shrub found in the 200 square miles surrounding my Central New York home, including quite a few questionably-naturalized adventive…

[image] ddennism: …I strongly disagree, and that’s why field guides, in my opinion, are kind of a waste of time these days. New aliens, recent segregates, commonly-planted “waifs”…these actually make up a HUGE number of plants that beginners are very likely to encounter in “the wild”. Their glar…

in terms of Newcolm’s i don’t use it much any more but used to, and often give it to people who are setting out to learn the plants. It 's really useful in that it’s different, and so people with different brain types who aren’t great at dichotomous keys can still use it. I’d advocate for not trying…

[image] ddennism: recent segregates Your floras, monographs, and keys – unless they are the paper describing the segregate – also aren’t going to have those.

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Nature Talk

ddennism March 8, 2023, 10:27pm 4

restricted to plants, restricted to “classic” guides, restricted esp. to “beginner” guides or other pseudo-pedagogical guides that purposely gloss over most entities

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