Book Review 14: Raising Butterflies and Moths in the Garden 

Raising Butterflies and Moths in the Garden 

By Brenda Dziedzic 

  • Publisher: Firefly Books, Second Edition,  2023 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 400 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 0228104203 
  • Dimensions: 6” X 9” 
  • Price: $23.44 (Amazon.ca – currently a 22% discount); $22.46 (Amazon.com – currently a 25% discount) 

Another great publication from Firefly Books. After publishing my own book with Firefly, I am much more keenly aware of what it takes to put a book like this together, and Brenda Dziedzic and Firefly Books have done a great job with Raising Butterflies and Moths in the Garden

This book is pretty much 400 pages of beautiful photos of butterflies and moths, their caterpillars, eggs and the plants they feed on. And every butterfly/moth page has a clear North American range map for the species.  

The introduction starts out with descriptions on the differences between butterflies and moths then goes into detail about their life cycle, and it does this with minimal technical jargon and in a clear, readable fashion. It wraps up the intro with a section on the various Butterfly and Moth families – which is how the insects are sorted within the body of the book. 

The introduction is followed by a short (4 page) chapter on Butterfly and Moth Gardening Essentials, and by an even shorter (2 page) chapter on Raising Butterflies and Moths. There are lots of excellent photos throughout, helping to clarify the text. (I didn’t notice any unnecessary or superfluous images as sometimes get thrown into a book like this.) 

By page 24 we are already into the meat of the book – starting with the Black Swallowtail. The butterflies are grouped by family and within the families, the butterflies are sorted alphabetically by common name. (Fortunately, it would seem, there is not the same issue with multiple common names as is the case with native plants.) 

Each butterfly is given anywhere from 6 to 10 photograph filled pages. In addition to the range maps, there are photos of adults (both upper and lower sides of their wings, eggs, caterpillars (in various stages or instars), chrysalises/cocoons and plants – host plants for the caterpillars and nectar plants for the adults.  

The text for each species includes information on Family, Flight Period, Wingspan, Larval Host Plant(s), and Adult Food. These last two are critical information if you want to garden for butterflies and moths. 

At the back of the book is a Glossary (pretty important for anyone new just learning about butterflies and moths), a list of Useful Websites, and a Bibliography (or as I tend to think of it – a wish list of books for my collection).  

There are 2 separate indexes. The first one (my favourite) is a 6-page Host/Larval Food Plants Index. The second is an index of the moths and butterflies in the book. Both indexes list both common and scientific names. 

My complaints about this book are minor and seem quite trivial in light of all the wonderful aspects of the book. The first is that the first page for each butterfly/moth contains a small colour bar in the upper left corner of the page. However, nowhere did I find a matching chart to explain the different colour codes (ideally this should have been in the intro where the author discussed things like range maps). As a result, this was a slightly confusing aspect until I finally worked out that the different colours represented the different families.  

The other issue, which is actually a strength of the book as well as a drawback, is that the book covers all of North America, not just a particular region where a common group of butterflies/moths might be found. The range maps tell you at a glance if the butterfly or moth is to be found where you live, but I would really have liked a more regional coverage. However, of the 36 butterflies, only 7 are not native to the southern Great Lakes region where I am. And of the 13 moths covered, 8 are native here, 2 are native to the southern US and one (Spongy Moth) is an invasive species. For this last species, the clear photos of the adults, caterpillars and cocoons will help when we have to decide if that is a friend or foe in the garden. 

Summary 

I have to say – I love this book. The photos are top quality, all the information is relevant, clear and readable. If, like me, you are gardening for the insects and other critters, then this book should be on your bookshelf. 

Happy native plant growing (and butterfly watching). 

Book Review 13: Attracting Native Pollinators – Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies

By The Xerces Society (E. Mader, M. Shepherd, M. Vaughan, S.H. Black and G. LeBuhn)

  • Publisher: Storey Publishing, 2011
  • Paperback‏:‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10: 1603426957
  • Dimensions: 7” X 10”
  • Price: $30.37 (Amazon.ca – currently a 20% discount); $16.49 (Amazon.com – currently a 45% discount)

Consider me suitably impressed. I received this book as a Christmas present last year, glanced through it and thought it looked interesting, but then shelved it till I had time to read it. Ten months later I pulled it off the shelf – not because I was that keen to read it, but because I wanted to do this book review and this seemed as good a book as any to review. Well, was I surprised. This is not only a good read, but it is chock full of fantastic information and loads of great photographs.

The book is divided into four sections: Pollinators and Pollination; Taking Action; Bees of North America; and Creating Pollinator Friendly Landscapes. I will hit what I think are the highlights (and a couple of drawbacks) of the book.

Part 1 – Pollinators and Pollination

This 85 page section covers the science of how pollination works, and covers a host of pollinators – from bees to flies to moths and butterflies to beetles. It discusses how each group goes about their business and provides lots of examples (with great photos) of the various insects. It wraps up the section discussing the various threats to these pollinators – from habitat destruction to climate change – and the implications of this.

Part 2 – Taking Action

This is a long (128 page) section that covers A LOT of territory. It starts off discussing strategies we can use to help pollinators (hint – a high diversity of pollen producing plants!) and then goes into managing your pollinator habitat. On page 95, there’s an inset that lists key things to consider when providing foraging habitat: start small; provide a succession of blooms; grow a variety of pollen and nectar rich species; native plants are better; and, if possible, don’t use pesticides.

Following this is a section discussing habitat design, including nesting and egg laying sites and how to build a nest block for native bees.

There is also a section on community (and school) gardens including regional (US and southern Canada) native plant lists. (They also include a list of some non-natives that they recommend.)

Part 2 wraps up with a very lengthy discussion on bee-friendly farm management, golf courses and urban green spaces, natural areas and even a bit about green roofs.

Part 3 – Bees of North America

Part 3 has an introduction to the science and study of bees, including bee anatomy, bees vs flower flies, etc. then goes into detail on 32 genera of native bees plus the honeybee. Each bee gets a full page description that covers identification, similar insects, foraging, nests and conservation concerns. There is a photo of the bee plus a silhouette of the bee showing its actual size and a paragraph entitled “Did You Know?” that covers something interesting about the species.

Yet despite all this great info, this is the one part of the book that I have the biggest complaint about. With 4,000 species of bees in North America, this is just a very small sampling at the genus level (not the species level) so beyond being interesting reading, it’s not very helpful in the garden when I’m trying to figure out which bee I’m looking at. A much better book for this, in my opinion, is Common Bees of Eastern North America by O.M Carril and J.S. Wilson (Princeton University Press, 2021) – there’s also a version for Western North America.

Part 4 – Creating a Pollinator-Friendly Landscape

This section starts with a few pages of generic garden design samples but then provides yet a third group of “regional plant lists” with a different selection of species than the last two. It’s as if the different sections were written by individual authors, then brought together with little thought about combining these tables into a master table in the appendix (probably could have saved a few pages in the printing). This set of lists, again, ALSO includes a list of non-natives deemed suitable.

The book then has a section listing details (including a photo) for a number of the plants highlighting light, moisture, bloom time, flower colour, height, region(s) and then a very short paragraph about the plant. These are listed in alphabetic order by common name (problematic if your part of the country calls a plant by a different common name than mine!).

Of the 38 plants listed, only 26 are native to the Great Lakes region where I live. There are also 27 species of trees and shrubs, of which only 12 are native here. And there are a number of non-natives listed, too.

The final section of Part 4 lists the host plants for a number of butterflies with a sampling of photos for some of the butterfly species.

Summary

All in all, I think this book would be a great addition to any native-plant-gardener’s library. I now wish I had started reading it last winter when I first got it as it is chock full of really interesting information.

Happy native plant growing.

Book Review 12 

Native Plants for the Short Season Yard: Best Picks for the Chinook and Canadian Prairie Zones 

By Lyndon Penner 

  • Publisher: ‎Brush Education, (2016) 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 272 pages 
  • ISBN-10: ‏155059640 
  • Dimensions: 6” X 9” 
  • Price: $9.99 (Amazon.ca – Kindle Edition); $10.49 (Amazon.com – Kindle Edition)  

– note: at the time of writing, this book appears to be no longer available in print form except as atrociously priced used copies, though you may be able to find it cheaper somewhere other than Amazon. 

Note: This review is adapted and expanded from the one I posted to Amazon after purchasing the book in 2022. I subsequently returned the book as it did not meet my expectations. 

I really wanted to like this little book. It is a good book for northern gardeners, and would be a great read to help you get through the long winter, but as a useful guide it is lacking. For starters, it is very text heavy – it takes a lot of reading to find out what you might need to know for any particular plant. In addition, the photos are very small and not all that helpful. 

I did appreciate that the plants were listed in alphabetic order by scientific name, but they are grouped by shade tolerance. This is problematic for several reasons. For one, many native plants often do OK in a large range of shade. Aquilegia (columbine), for instance, is listed in the full sun category in this book, though in many other books it is listed as part shade (and in one book that I recently read it was listed as part shade to full shade). In my own garden, it thrives in all three shade categories. As a result, it is difficult to decide where I should start looking for a particular plant. 

Another complaint I have is the index – under Aquilegia, it says to see Columbine. Why would you not just put the page number beside Aquilegia? And this is how ALL the scientific names are handled. It just means you need to take an extra step if you happen to know the scientific name rather than the common name (and I have discussed at length, elsewhere, the problems with common names). 

My biggest beef with the book, though, is that with the title Native Plants for the Short Season Yard, even though the author talks about the importance of native plants, he says “sometimes, hybrid or garden forms are better choices” and then goes on to add “Don’t be a purist”. There is lots of research now available that indicates that hybrids (sometimes referred to as nativars – for native cultivar) do NOT provide the same benefits to insects that the pure strains do. Yet the author does not discuss this aspect of using cultivars.  

Despite the flaws, there are some other good things the author has done. For one, there is a section called Potential Threats to Native Plants, that includes, among other things, a discussion on invasive species. He also talks about the use of natural alternatives to pesticides. In addition, he spends some time discussing how to ethically and responsibly grow native plants from seeds and cuttings and why we shouldn’t dig plants from the wild (unless, of course, the land is slated for development). 

Given the paucity of books on native plant gardening for northern climates, this might be a great starting point if you’re looking for something to read this winter, but I was quite disappointed in the book overall, despite wanting to like it (for the very reason that there ARE very few books on the subject). It really is aimed at gardeners in the Canadian prairies (and perhaps the northern-most Midwest States) but the like any good gardening book, there is probably lots that other gardeners can get from this little volume. 

If you’re looking for a good winter’s read, and you don’t mind reading the kindle version, then this would be a good little book for a northern gardener. But in the end, I only gave 3 stars out of 5. 

Happy Native Plant Gardening. 

© The Native Plant Gardener 2024 

Book Review: Native Plants for Prairie Gardens

By June Flanagan

· Publisher: Fifth House Books, (2005)

· Paperback: 208 pages

· ISBN-10: 1391894856

· Dimensions: 9” X 9”

· Price: $33.21 (Amazon.ca); $10.91 (used, on Amazon.com)

Note: This review is adapted and expanded from the one I posted to Amazon after purchasing the book in 2017.

The title is a bit misleading. I was expecting more of a field guide to plants suitable for gardening. Instead, the book is more about acquiring, planting and growing the native species. It contains very few pictures – mostly text. I probably would have called the book “Gardening with Native Prairie Plants” because what you get is a well thought out treatise on that topic.

The book starts with definitions of prairie, then lists the plants for various uses in the garden (colour, xeriscaping, shade, winter interest, etc.). The chapter on acquiring native plants differentiates between garden center sources (true native plants vs cultivars) and gathering your own seed – including a section on storing your seeds.

The author talks about adding organic matter to help your gardens, and this may be necessary for her region, but in southern Ontario my experience has been that adding organic matter only makes your plants tall and “leggy” and prone to falling over. They are quite capable of finding all the nutrients they need with their deep roots.

There is a chapter on plant propagation that is quite good, but if you are serious about this aspect, I highly recommend you also get The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwest (see my book review from Nov 24, 2023).

In the final chapter (which is slightly more than half the book) the author identifies a number of wildflowers, grasses and woody plants, and includes a table on the blooming period of the plants. Each plant is well described, with one (albeit very good) photo of each plant, and lots of interesting information. The area the book covers is the upper Midwest of the US and the southern Prairie provinces in Canada – all points west of Lake Michigan and Ontario and although most of the plants listed are not native to my southern Great Lakes region, a few are. But that is not the strength of this little book. What I liked about the book is contained in the first half – the parts about using the plants in your garden.

If you are in the southern Great Lakes region, this book may not offer enough for you, but it’s a great read and I believe it was worth adding to my collection.

Happy Native Plant Gardening.

© The Native Plant Gardener 2024

Book Review: Taming Wildflowers 

By Miriam Goldberger 

  • Publisher: ‎St. Lynn’s Press, 2014 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 208 pages 
  • ISBN-10: ‏0985562269 
  • Dimensions: 8.5” X 8.5” 
  • Price: $25.99 (Indigo.ca); $18.89 (Amazon.com) – hardcover 

Note: This review is adapted from the one I posted to Amazon after purchasing the book in 2020. 

There are a lot of things to like about this award winning book (The Garden Writers Association Silver Award of Achievement). The book seems to be geared primarily to introducing new gardeners to the joy of growing “wildflowers”, but it can be confusing in places for the newbie. I’ll start with what I like about it, and wrap up with the flaws, as I see them. (I will say up front that, after publishing my own book on the topic, I now have a greater appreciation for what it takes to put a book like this together – including the challenges of working with a publisher and an editor.) 

First off, the pictures, for the most part, are fabulous. Not only does Goldberger have clear pictures of the flower, but also shows a picture of what the baby plant looks like. Although not really necessary for a new gardener, once your garden is established this will really help you figure out which emerging plants in the spring are weeds, and which are supposed to be there.  

She also goes into fairly good detail in the front of the book on the importance of “wildflowers” (I will explain later why I continue to put this word in quotation marks) with a discussion about pollinators, birds and the connection to our own health. (On this subject – the best book I have read to date is Doug Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home).  

Each flower has its own page – there are 60 of her favourite “wildflowers” (which includes some grasses) – with excellent descriptions on height, colour, light, soil and moisture needs, a germination code for when you want to start your own from seed, and some of its key strengths and weaknesses (e.g. deer resistance, suitability for containers, salt tolerance, edibility, etc.) And finally it indicates which states and provinces the plant is native to (more on this later, too).  

I originally thought I liked that she has arranged the plants based on the season they come into bloom – spring, late spring-early summer, summer, and fall – but that makes it a bit more challenging to go directly to a plant’s page in the book if you are unsure of its flowering time. At the end of the book there are great instructions, based on years of her own experience, for starting your own plants from seed, on ecosystem gardening, on composting, and more. She concludes the book with a two-page spread indicating which are the best wildflowers to grow, based on your soil type. All in all, this is a wonderful, fact and picture filled book that would be a great addition to any gardener’s library. 

Despite all these great things, I was bothered by the fact that Goldberger has a very loose definition of a wildflower. At one point, she equates wildflowers with native plants, but I don’t believe that is what most people think of when they hear the term. She even talks about her first attempt to plant a meadow by buying a package of “Northeastern Wildflower Meadow Mix” that was mostly non-native species, and the frustration that resulted. (This is EXACTLY how I got started into native plants, so I can relate.) She also has an entire section, set up in the same format as the native plant descriptions, of 19 non-natives like Chinese basil, scarlet runner beans, Mexican sunflower and zinnias. Not only are these non-natives, but it’s hard to even picture most of them as “wildflowers”.  

The second serious issue I have is that the plants are listed in alphabetic order by common name within the respective season of blooming sections. The big issue with this is that common names vary considerably by region. In the book, she calls Asclepias incarnata Red Milkweed. I’ve only ever called it Swamp Milkweed and didn’t know where for look (till I looked in the index). Slightly less annoying (till I learned to consult the index first) is that if you don’t actually know the bloom period for a plant, you can’t easily find it in the book. 

After that, my issues with the book get a little bit nit-pickier – listing the state or province the plants are native to is fine when you have small states, but Canadian provinces are HUGE, and plants native to southern Ontario, for instance, may not be (and probably aren’t) native to most of the rest of the province. A native-range map would have been far more helpful in determining if one of these flowers would survive in your garden.  

Goldberger also includes a section on cut-flower arrangements and includes a section of photos showing off her arrangements. There is even a section of wedding photos, some of which include images of her bouquets in action. Definitely not something that interested me. This is her business, after all, but it felt more like an advertisement than a book on growing wildflowers.  

My overall summary – this is still a great book for a new, or even experienced, gardener who wants to grow more native plants, despite what I see as its flaws. But if you really want to grow native plants – for all their benefits – use this book as a general guide, then check out the web to find out if that plant is actually native where you live or somewhere far away. 

© The Native Plant Gardener 2024 

Book Review: Native Plant Gardening for Birds, Bees & Butterflies: Upper Midwest 

Book by Jaret C Daniels 

  • Publisher: ‎Adventure Publications, 2020 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 276 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 1591939410 
  • Dimensions: 8” X 10” 
  • Price: $36.59 (Amazon.ca – note, this book is available on Kindle for $16.32); $16.49 (Amazon.com) 

This is, indeed, a beautiful book to add to your collection. The photos are large, sharp and nicely laid out. A brief description of each plant, including its bloom period and its growing conditions, and which groups of insects it’s important to make this book stand out.  

The interesting tables at both the beginning and end of the book are helpful as well. The tables at the front summarize the information on the plant pages, while at the back of the book, tables show which plants are suitable as bird food and or for nesting, and which are good hummingbird plants. Finally there is a section called Larval Host List. All great and useful ideas. But I struggle with 3 things in particular about the book (four, if you count the lack of an index). 
 
The first problem is its organizational scheme – plants are grouped by light requirements: full sun, full sun to partial shade, and partial shade to full shade. In theory this sounds great. Unfortunately, many native plants don’t fall neatly into one of the categories. For instance, another book I recently reviewed on Amazon.ca lists Aquilegia canadensis (wild columbine) as a full sun plant. This book puts it into the part shade to full shade section. In fact, both are right as it will do just fine in all the categories. But what exacerbates the problem with this book is that there is no index, so if you want to look up a particular plant, you have to figure out WHERE the author thinks it grows. 
 
The second problem (again, no index makes it worse) is that the book lists the plants in each section in alphabetic order by common name. Using Aquilegia canadensis again as my example, the author calls it Red Columbine, whereas most folk I know call it wild columbine, but it is also known as Canadian columbine, common American columbine, Jack-in-trousers, rock lily, and even as cluckies, depending on where you’re from. This is why native plant gardeners in particular often prefer scientific names. It took me a while to find this plant’s listing in the book because I’ve never known it as red columbine. To be fair, the author is an entomologist (bug person) not a botanist (plant person) so perhaps he was unaware that native plant names can be so different depending on where you live. 
 
My final (and a somewhat minor) complaint is in what otherwise appears to be a useful introduction – under the heading Improving the Soil. Unless you are planting into an abandoned quarry or gravel pit, you probably should not add compost or animal manure as the author recommends. Native plants have evolved the ability to extract nutrients and moisture from deep in the soil profile, and fertilizing them just tends to make the plants tall, leggy and weak-stemmed (I speak from experience, as I made this mistake with the first flower bed I planted with native species – and it took years to use up the excess nutrients in the soil). 
 
However, despite my complaints about the book, I am happy to keep in on my shelf for the sheer beauty of the photography in it. Although it is paperback, I could easily see this as a hard-cover coffee table book, the pictures are that nice. On a snowy winter’s day, it’s a lovely book to browse through while I dream of spring. 

Book Review: The Prairie in Seed: Identifying Seed-Bearing Prairie Plants in the Upper Midwest 

By Dave Williams 

  • Publisher: ‎University od Iowa Press, 2010 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 140 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 1609384091 
  • Dimensions: 6” X 9” 
  • Price: $55.24 (Amazon.ca – note, this book is available on Kindle for $16.99); $17.00 (Amazon.com) 

This book is not available from Amazon.ca, directly, but through a 3rd party vendor – hence the absolutely ridiculous price on Amazon.ca. But if you’re happy with the Kindle version, or you have an American address you can order from Amazon.com, then this book is worth considering. 

An excellent guide to identifying many native prairie plants in seed. A great addition to The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwest (see my previous review of this excellent book by the same author at https://nativeplantgardener.ca/book-review-the-tallgrass-prairie-center-guide-to-seed-and-seedling-identification-in-the-upper-midwest/).  

Clearly laid out in sections defined by the shape of the plant in seed (e.g.solitary seed heads, seeds in follicles, etc.) with clear outline sketches of the typical shape shown at the beginning of each section. 

Each plant is first identified in flower, with a clear photo, then in seed, also with a clear photo, and finally a description of the best seed harvesting technique is given for each plant. There is also a photo with a scale bar of the seed. 

At the back of the book are clear sketches of leaf arrangements, shapes and margins as definitions. There are also 3 extremely useful tables at the back of the book that elaborate on the information for each plant (with both the scientific and common names given): Table 1 is Initial Flowering and Ripening Times indicating early, mid or late part of each month that you can expect flowers, then ripe seeds; Table 2 indicates Initial Ripening Time and Duration after Ripening; and Table 3 describes the Average Number of Seeds per Stalk. 

The book is so well done that my only complaint is that there are only 73 species identified. I sincerely hope the author is working on volume 2 to cover another 80 species or so. And although the book covers plants of the US Midwest, many of the plants are also found here in the southern Great Lakes region. 

Book Review – The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwest 

By Dave Williams and Brent Butler 

  • Publisher: ‎University od Iowa Press, 2010 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 138 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 158729902 
  • Dimensions: 6.13” X 9.25” 
  • Price: $19.21 (Amazon.ca); $14.00 (Amazon.com) 

For the serious grower of Native Plants. And for the beginner, too. If you are growing native tallgrass prairie species in a greenhouse, are winter sowing, or if you just want to know if you should pull that weed or leave it, this book is excellent. The authors grew a number of forbs and grasses in the greenhouse for several weeks and photographed them at various stages. They then point out the key characteristics at each stage of development. They provide photos of the seeds, too. All pictures are clear and unambiguous and the descriptors include germination and growth notes, as well as a section on look-alikes.  

The book is broken down into two main parts – Forbs Identification Guide, and Grasses Identification Guide. The Forbs section is further subdivided into 7 groups based on key characteristics, the Grasses section into 4 groups. The authors state “Associated with each group is a line drawing of a seedling with its most important parts highlighted. Remember those parts, because seedling identification is nothing more than finding them – or not finding them – in a key. Seedlings are therefore grouped by their key characteristics, not by their species or in alphabetical order.” 

This is an excellent guide. And although it is for the Upper Midwest (US), most of the plants are native in the southern Great Lakes Region, too. This should prove to be a very helpful book for anyone doing winter sowing and wondering in the spring if you actually have growing what the label says (speaking from experience, here). 

Happy native plant growing. 

Book Review – The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants

Book Review – The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants

The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants 

By Neil Diboll & Hilary Cox 

  • Publisher: ‎University of Chicago Press, 2023 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 644 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 022680593X 
  • Dimensions: 6” X 9” 
  • Price: $47.31 (Amazon.ca); $34.99 (Kindle only – Amazon.com) 

As both a gardener and a bibliophile, I splurged to buy this book (over $50 with tax here in Canada) because it sounded like an awesome guide to native plants, even if it was for a region slightly west of where I am in southern Ontario. And as a book collector (some might say hoarder) I have lots of books on my shelf that I seldom open after the initial reading.  Was it worth the money? Yes and No.  

In the Introduction, the authors state that it is “intended for use by both gardeners and professionals”. I would argue that it would make an awesome textbook for a college or university level course on prairie restoration. And though it does have considerable merit for the native plant gardener – there ARE a lot of things to like about this book, after all – there are also a few things that I find frustrating or questionable. 

What I Liked 

For starters, The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants is a very well produced volume from the University of Chicago Press with excellent quality paper and a sewn, rather than glued, binding so it should be extremely durable. It’s a hefty volume – well over 600 pages long. (Out of curiosity I stuck it on my kitchen scales and it weighed in at almost 3 lbs – you’ll not likely carry this around on your next trip to the garden center!) 

The book contains your typical introduction that you find in this genre with chapters on how to use the book (including a section on the use of scientific names), the ecology of prairie, understanding your soil, and on designing, planting and maintaining a prairie garden. The chapters on ecology and soil are very typical of a school textbook with some good science written in an understandable way. The chapter on designing, planting and maintenance of prairie gardens is more geared to the average home gardener and offers lots of useful tidbits, such as why using cocoa bean hulls as mulch isn’t such a great idea (they can be toxic to pets). 

Chapter 5, entitled “Prairie Species Field Guide”, is where the meat of the book begins. This section covers 148 species of prairie plants – chosen, for the most part, because they are commonly used in gardens, though the authors do include a few that are less common which they think should be in our gardens, too.  

This “Field Guide” is, in my opinion, the best part of the book from a gardener’s perspective. For each plant the book is divided into two facing pages – on the first page the authors provide the scientific name, followed by one or two common names, and the family to which the plant belongs. This is immediately followed by three or four sentences about the plant. 

The rest of the page consists primarily of bullet points covering topics such as habitat; uses in the garden; USDA Hardiness Zone; soil, moisture and light requirements; size and flower colour; aggressiveness; and even a brief note on propagation. It then lists a few bullet points on distinguishing characteristics, and finally, at the bottom of the page, it includes a map of the plant’s range in the US and the southern edge of Canada (more about the range maps later). 

The second page consists primarily of photos. This is another unique and commendable inclusion in the book. So many native plant gardening books show a picture of a flower, or of the plant in situ, and a couple even show a photo of a seedling. But this book shows all of these, plus a picture of the seedhead, of a leaf, and of an emerging mature plant. At the bottom of the page is a paragraph identifying look-alike plants. All extremely useful for both new and experienced native plant gardeners alike. 

The next 45 or so pages (Chapters 6 & 7) cover establishing and maintaining a prairie meadow. This section seems more geared to land restoration folks than your average native plant gardener. It’s interesting, but to a home gardener not all that relevant. 

Chapter 8 is all about collecting seeds and propagating plants from those seeds. Chapter 9 covers propagating plants vegetatively. Both chapters would be useful for all intended audiences. 

The Parts I Was Less Thrilled About 

Up to this point we have covered just over 400 of the 644 pages. If they had stopped here, it would have been a great tool for gardeners, but MOST (not all) of the rest of the book seems far more appropriate for a college textbook or a landscape restoration manual than a Gardener’s Guide.  

Chapter 10 devotes over 30 pages to ‘The Prairie Food Web’, from pollinators up through the web to rattlesnakes and bison (even though it might be exciting to see a bison in my garden, I think it is pretty unlikely to happen in my fenced-in suburban yard). 

The next almost 200 pages are dedicated to tables. Lots and lots of tables with lots of cool information – from a purely academic standpoint, anyway – but overkill to say the least. If you can quantify it, there’s probably a table here for it. Everything from prairie seed mixes to tables on plant characteristics, on wildlife attracted, on aggressiveness of the plants, etc., etc. These tables provide a wealth of information for landscape restorers, but the font is small and the tables span multiple pages making them difficult to read. I’m not sure how many gardeners would take the time to find what they’re looking for in the tables. Most of the relevant information is already, or could easily be, incorporated into the plant descriptions in Chapter 5. Chapter 11 (Seed Mixes) consists of 12 tables spread over 34 pages while Chapter 5, simply called Tables, has 30 tables spread across 142 pages. 

Almost 200 pages of tightly packed tables make up almost 1/3 of the book.

The second issue I have with the book is the way the plants are organized. I do like that the plants are listed in alphabetic order by scientific name, but they are subdivided first into Monocots, Dicots, and Grasses & Sedges and then further subdivided by family. How many home gardeners are going to know if the plant they are looking for is a monocot or a dicot or if it is Asteraceae or Fabaceae. How many will even care. Include this information on the plant page if it’s that important, but don’t divide the book into these sections. It just takes that much longer to find the plant you’re looking for.  

The only other beef I have about the book is about the range maps. The maps are simply reproductions of the Biota of North America Program (BONAP) maps available on the BONAP website. These maps are pretty useful – if you live in the US – because they show plant presence on a county basis. In Canada, they only work at a provincial level which is next to useless if I want to know if a plant is actually native to where I live. And, like the complaint I have with so many American publications, the map only covers as much of Canada as is needed to capture the lower 48 states in one image. My research shows that there are more nurseries and garden centers promoting and selling native plants in southern Ontario alone than in any state in the US. We are a big market for native plant gardeners. 

The other complaint I have about the BONAP maps is the lack of clarity about what the colour coding actually means. The legend indicates that the light green represents “Species present and not rare” – but “present’ and “native” aren’t necessarily the same thing. Another shade of green (very similar to the first one) indicates “Species native, but adventive in state”.  Adventive, by definition, means “not native” (Dictionary.com), or “introduced to a new area and not yet established there; exotic” (Collins Dictionary). How can it be both native and exotic? Some time ago I reached out to BONAP to get clarification on the definitions but was no further ahead after getting a response.  

What’s worse, the book doesn’t even include a legend to explain the colour coding for anyone not familiar with the maps, nor did I find any reference to the source of the maps to acknowledge where they came from or to allow the reader to look up the map themselves.   

And the reproduction of the maps leaves something to be desired. By necessity they are small. Which means it is extremely difficult to differentiate the shades of green. For example, in the images below I have the original BONAP map for Silphium perfoliatum (Cup Plant) and I have circled those counties where it indicates “adventive”. Beside it is the same map from the book. Your eyes are a lot better than mine if you can differentiate the shades of green. And it is important to do so because Cup Plant is not native to New York state and is actually considered invasive there – it is illegal to sell or to grow it for sale in that state.  

Range maps, like the ones in Flore printaniére by Gisèle Lamoreux (published by Fleurbec in Quebec, Canada) would have been much more useful. 

Summary 

Overall, this is a beautiful but pricey book. The “Field Guide” portion in the middle, with better range maps, would have made an excellent gardener’s guide on its own, and the resulting smaller volume would have made it more affordable to non-professionals. And because I have lots of books on my shelf that I have only read once, one more isn’t going to hurt so I will keep it. But whether you think it’s worth the price will depend on your book budget. 

Happy Native Plant Gardening. 

Rick 

© The Native Plant Gardener 2023 

Book Review: Latin for Gardeners

Book Review: Latin for Gardeners

Book Review 4 – Latin for Gardeners 

I thought I’d approach this book review a little differently. For those who struggle with the botanical names for plants, I’m going to give you some suggestions for useful books and provide some comparisons to help you decide which one (or ones) you might want to acquire.  

A Portable Latin for Gardeners: More than 1500 Essential Plant Names and the Secrets They Contain 

By James Armitage 

  • Publisher: ‎ University of Chicago Press, 2017 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 160 pages 
  • ISBN-10: ‏ 9780226455365 
  • Dimensions: 7.7” X 5.7” 
  • Price: $23.27 (Amazon.ca); $18.00 (Amazon.com) 

and 

Latin for Gardeners: Over 3,000 Plant Names Explained and Explored 

By Lorraine Harrison 

  • Publisher: ‎ University of Chicago Press, 2012 
  • Paperback‏:‎ 224 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 022600919X 
  • Dimensions: 6.4” X 9.1” 
  • Price: $31.94 (Amazon.ca); $25.00 (Amazon.com) – hardcover 

Either of these books would be a great addition to your library. Although written by different authors 5 years apart, they were both published by University of Chicago Press and so they are very similar in content and layout. 

Of the two, I prefer the second one, even though it’s a bit pricier. Not only does it contain twice as many terms, but it is hardcover and comes with a ribbon attached to the spine that can be used as a bookmark. The Portable Latin also has a built-in bookmarker, but it is an elastic attached to the back cover that, although it does the job, is not as easy to use. It is a very sturdy cover, for a paperback, and seems very well constructed and durable. 

Both books are beautifully illustrated with artistic renderings of plants, and the larger Latin for Gardeners also contains one- and two-page inserts throughout that highlight various genera of plants (20 of them), discuss the people who hunted for and discovered plants (10 of them), and other, assorted “Plant Themes” (7 of them). It also has a number of ¼ page inserts, titled Latin in Action, that include a drawing of a plant and discuss some of its attributes or how it can be used in the garden. 

The terms listed in Latin for Gardeners are listed in alphabetic order, from “a-“ (used in compound words to denote without or contrary to) to “zonatus” (with bands, often colored, as in Cryptanthus zonatus). The Portable Latin breaks the book down into sections based on the characteristics the terms refer to, then lists the terms in alphabetic order within each section. This necessitates the use of an index to find words, but it also makes for a much more interesting read, and in some ways, more educational and informative. 

The sections in A Portable Latin are “Color”, “Plant Form”, “Features of Plants”, “Comparisons”, “Places and People”, and “Ideas, Associations, and Properties”. Within each of these categories are subcategories. For example, the section “Color” is further divided into “Light Colors” (e.g. albiflorus, albiflora, albiflorum With white flowers, as in Buddleja albiflora), “Bright Colors” (e.g. fucatus, fucata, fucatum Painted; dyed, as in Crocosmia fucata) and “Dark Colors and Multicolors” (e.g. purpurascens Becoming purple, as in Clianthus purpurascens). 

Both books will help you better understand the botanical names that we often struggle with. And even though 3,000 terms seems like a lot, there are many terms I encounter regularly when working with native plants that don’t show up in either book, such as oolentangiense (as in Symphyotrichum oolentangiense, Sky Blue Aster) or prinoides (as in Quercus prinoides, Dwarf Chinquapin Oak). 

A similar book that just arrived in the mail this week (I found a good used copy online through Thrift Books in the US for under $8) is  

A Gardener’s Handbook of Plant Names: Their Meanings and Origins 

By A. W. Smith 

  • Publisher: ‎ Dover Publications, 1997 (reprint of original 1963 version)  
  • Paperback‏:‎ 448 pages 
  • ISBN-10: 0486297152 
  • Dimensions: 5.4” X 8.54” 
  • Price: $25.12 (Amazon.ca); $16.68 (Amazon.com) 

This book contains no pictures of any kind, but it has a lot more terms defined than the other two (alas, it doesn’t include oolentangiense or prinoides, either). In my research for this review, I couldn’t find out exactly how many terms, but it does include some other interesting things, as well. One of these is a table of 1800 common plant names and their corresponding botanical ones. Whereas the first two books only list terms that are used in the specific epithet (species name), this book also includes the terms used in the generic names (e.g. Asclepias for milkweed). It also gives a much more detailed description of how the Latinized words are used and pronounced for botanical names, and points out some of the exceptions that tend to throw us for a loop when we think we finally have it figured out.  

Any of these books would be useful, and it depends on what you are looking for. The artwork in the first two books make them wonderful books just to read through, but the dictionary-like structure of the third one, as well as the extra information contained within it, makes the third book a bit more practical.  

Or, you could do like I did, and get all three. 

Happy native plant gardening.