The key to the vascular flora of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada

About this book

Foreword: Floyd Swink is the Senior Taxonomist at the Morton Arboretum, where he has served as the authority on our local flora and has published several editions of the Flora of the Chicago Region--the first edition in 1969, the second in 1974, followed by a revised and expanded edition with keys in 1979. The revised edition was co-authored by Floyd Seink and Gerould Wilhelm, also of the Morton Arboretum. Floyd Swink has been a student of the flora of the Chicago region for over 49 years. While studying and collecting plants in the field, he quickly became interested in their habitats, their associates, and their interrelationships with animals. Thus, over the years he has become a mine of information about these living organisms as they occur together under the varied stresses of nature and man, particularly urban man and his forces of land development. After his monumental "plants of the Chicago Region", he responded to numerous requests for a more widely useful set of "keys" to vascular plants based on their common field traits. With great enthusiasm he has produced a set of practical keys to the major vascular flora from Maine through Minnesota south through Missouri east through Virginia and back through Maine. The keys will include about 90% of the flora, but will not incllude plants unlikely to be seen by the typical student of nature study. It will be a handy tool for all, but primarily for the non-professional student of natural history. This is a field guide, handy to carry and quick for reference. Its most important feature is that the keys were constructed from field data and tested in the field, which results in a very practical, easy-to-use guide. This "tool of the trade" is what we might expect from an outstanding life-long naturalist of Floyd Swink's caliber.--Marion T. Hall--Director-The Morton Arboretum.