What is your favorite tree book? We are creating a list of all the best books about trees. Whether field guide or fiction, art book or paperback, tell us what tree books are important to you. We will accumulate the list from your Facebook comments (you can post to Facebook by scrolling down on this story, or go to the Venerable Trees Facebook Page or the Native Tree Society page).
Be sure to tell us why this book is important to you, and provide the title, author and genre (field guide, fiction, etc.). Provide a link to a source for the book if you can.
Our goal is not to create a comprehensive list of tree books but to understand what makes a tree book important to each of us.
I’ll start:
I began studying forest biology at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, with the intention of becoming a wildlife ecologist. My first semester, I took Dendrology, for which the textbook was Harlow and Harrar’s Textbook of Dendrology. Moosewood Bill Harlow was still working at Syracuse, but was no longer teaching. My first weekend at Syracuse, I got the textbook from the University bookstore and began reading it. I did not stop until Sunday afternoon, having read it cover to cover. That weekend changed the path of my career. By Monday morning, I had declared a forest botany major and went on to earn my PhD in forestry and botany at Wisconsin. I have been a forest botanist and tree physiologist ever since. I still have the Textbook of Dendrology in one of its newer editions. Textbook of Dendrology, William Harlow and Ellwood Harrar, 5th edition, 1969. McGraw Hill. (9th edition is currently available).
There are plenty of other tree books that have been important to me, and I’ll add some of them later.