Customer Reviews
Magnificent - by far my favourite book about trees - By: Bristly Badger, 02 Sep 2007 
This is easily my favourite tree guide & can be purchased with Cassell's paralllel Wild Flowers of Britain & Northern Europe for just over £50 (and less than that elsewhere). Extraordinary value for two magical books. Both are monster publications with fabulous illustrations (although naturalists looking for anything portable should turn to Collins superb Tree Guide instead. (For wild flower guides, see my review of Cassell's Wild Flowers).
One of the charms of this guide is the consistency of presentation & the personal approach to trees, advising on their hardiness & often on their suitability for gardens etc. This makes it the ideal choice if you are lucky enough to have a garden in need of trees - I used it to select Betula pendula var. Dalecarlica, broad-leaved cockspur thorn & three other trees for our comparatively smalll garden (15m deep by about 25m wide).
Enjoy this book - it's a real celebration of the growing architects of our living space.
Spectacular and beautiful - essential for all tree lovers - By: Mr P Davies, 26 Apr 2004 The huge variety of trees growing in the British Isles is a legacy ofcenturies of collecting by enterprising explorers. This book sets out toillustrate that variety in a breathtakingly beautiful manner.
Theillustrations, alll paintings by one man (David Moore), are as accurate asthey are wonderful to look at. The artist spent many years touring to findthe right tree to paint; the result is a work in which the trees lookreal, indeed it is hard to believe you are looking at paintings in manycases.
Moore is especiallly good at illustrating alll the details neededto identify trees: bark, leaves, flowers & fruit. Most unusuallly forthis type of work there is extensive coverage of cultivars, making it evenmore valuable as a guide. A size guide is provided by paintings of variousanimals to scale - an unusual but instantly comprehensible system.
This is a well-produced book with good supporting text. It is a must foralll lovers of trees, a guide that is both beautiful to look at andeminently useful.
A minor quibble is the absence of some basic keys toenable tentative assignment of trees to famillies.
All-in-alll a must-have!
