Review by Martha Quillen
Botany – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado Flora, Eastern Slope
Revised Edition
by William A. Weber and Ronald C. Wittmann
University Press of Colorado, 1996
ISBN 0870813870
Also a companion volume:
Colorado Flora, Western Slope
ISBN 0870813889
The University Press fall catalog probably says it best. “These revised editions are an absolute must for any botanist or serious student of Colorado’s flora.”
Being only a casual floraphile, however, I can merely say what this book isn’t good for. If you don’t know much about articulation and basal lobes, it’s nearly impossible to identify that little blue flower you recently saw using this text.
Also, it’s not going to make you easily conversant with Fairy Slippers, Columbines or Baby’s Breath, because the author disdains common names.
“My experience,” the preface claims, “has been that children have no trouble at all with scientific names, especially if they are told the meaning, nor with technical keys…” The introduction goes on to reproach works that have tried to supply common names. “Here are some horrible examples of the lengths this practice can go. A book on lichens (G.G. Neiring: The Lichen Book, 1947) attempted to be user-friendly by translating the scientific names. The following examples emerged: Leper Lichen, Herd Lichen, Bitter Knob Lichen, Crumbling Stud Lichen…”
If you’re like me and such names don’t horrify you, you probably don’t know enough about plants to need this book.
The authors have, however, put together an extensive list of Colorado flora, and their instructions on matters like collecting and preserving botanical specimens are clear and simple.
Even though the book was more academic than I wanted to get, I actually enjoyed the entries about the mountain parks and alien plants. But I just don’t need hundreds of pages of scientific descriptions of plants.
For those with a more scientific interest in flowers, however, this may be just the text.
Colorado Flora comes in two books, East Slope and West Slope, which are available separately.
Here’s a sample entry for those trying to decide:
CRYTOGRAMMACEAE Rock Brake Family (CRG)
Our single genus, Cryptogramma, contains two species, one of them extremely common and the other extremely rare. These plants are known by their development of a special fertile frond in which the pinnules are converted to podlike sporangial units, with the pinnule margins rolled over the sori. The rare species, C. stelleri, instead of being densely tufted is slender and rhizomatous, forming very few fronds and growing in the crevices of limestone cliffs. A prime area for one to discover this might be in the limestone areas of the Collegiate and Sangre de Cristo ranges.
Cryptogramma R. Brown 1823 [Greek, cryptos, hidden, + gramme, a line, alluding to the lines of sporangia]. ROCK BRAKE
One species, fronds robust, crowded on a short rhizome, lower parts of the stipes persistent. C. acrostichoides R. Brown [like the genus Acostichum]. Rocky places, montane to alpine [C. crispa subsp].
–Martha Quillen