Guide to the Flowers of Western China. Christopher Grey-Wilson and Phillip Cribb. 2011. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey. Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL. 642 pp. 2400 color plates, 10 maps. Hardcover. $115.00. ISBN: 978-1-84246-169-3.
In Guide to the Flowers of Western China, the Western reader will recognize many cultivated plants from our gardens and is reminded of the hundreds of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous cultivated plants that have their origins in China, from the iconic Ginkgo, to the economically important Camellia sinensis, to the numerous species of clematis, daphne, delphinium, gentian, geranium, lily, and rhododendron. The student of horticultural plants is wise to gain an understanding of the habitat and climate of these plants, as a guide to their care and cultivation. As such, this book will be an invaluable resource, particularly to the English speaker.
This book is largely an illustrated encyclopedic treatment of plant species, organized by order, family, and genus. On every other page, 5 to 10 (or more) color photographs accompany plant descriptions usually on the facing pages. Plant descriptions include enough information to identify a plant, and key information about each plant is also provided. Such helpful information as Distribution, Habitat, Altitude, and Flowering Time are provided for each species.
The regions included in the book cover some of the most botanically diverse areas of the world. Western China is recognized as one of the richest regions in that country for native flora. The book covers the region of western China delineated by Qinghai and Gansu in the north, southwards through Sichuan, west Hubei and Shaanxi to Yunnan, west Guangxi and Guizhou, and the eastern and southeastern fringes of Tibet (Xizang). These regions include five different climatic zones: cold-temperate, mid-temperate, warm-temperate, subtropical, and tropical. Helpful maps are included in the Introduction and endpapers, so that the reader can get an idea of topography, annual mean temperatures, and roadways through the area.
The Introduction provides plenty of background information, explaining the scope of the book, geographic areas that are included, how species were selected for inclusion in the book, and other background information that aids one’s appreciation of the material. Representative photographs of the region are provided, along with a discussion of the topography and climate. Chinese place names are explained, an important feature, given that place names have changed due to changes in Chinese transcription from the Wade-Giles Mandarin system to the Pinyin system. In the current system, Burma became Myanmar, Chungking became Chongqing, and so on. This information allows readers to relate references to places in older literature to those currently used.
It should be noted that the book is by no means a comprehensive treatment of all the plants of western China. Grasses (including bamboos), sedges, rushes, and ferns were omitted. For such a comprehensive collection, the reader is referred to the Flora of China Project, involving Chinese and foreign botanists (see http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/). The authors note that they would have included more plants of Tibet; however, the 2005 Himalayan Plants Illustrated (Toshio Yoshida, Yama-Kei Publishers Co. Ltd.), although written in Japanese, rendered such efforts unnecessarily duplicative.
Whereas, this book is a bit unwieldy to be useful as a field guide, it is an impressive, rich offering of plant identification covering a botanically important and vast area. It would make a useful addition as a shelf-guide and as reference material.