California Plant Families ─ West of the Sierran Crest and Deserts

Interest in California's beautiful native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers is at an all-time high. Yet identification and classification of the state's vast and varied flora can be challenging for both amateurs and professionals. This book provides a superb way for learning to identify California's native and naturalized plants by learning to recognize plant families. The heart of the book contains user-friendly keys and descriptions of seventy major families prominent in wildlands. With this book in hand, anyone will be able to identify common native and naturalized species throughout California's majestic floristic province extending from southwestern Oregon into northern Baja California and to the western side of the major mountain ranges.

Glenn Keator, a California plant specialist, is coauthor, with Alrie Middlebrook, of Designing California Native Gardens (UC Press) and author of Introduction to Trees of the San Francisco Bay Area (UC Press) and The Life of an Oak, among other books.