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An Encyclopedia of Cultivated Palms
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You Are Here: Books About Antiques > Collector Encyclopedias > Item 5 of 560
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$31.57
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Available from Amazon
Price Last Updated : 6-25-2008
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Features
Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Timber Press, Incorporated February 1, 2003
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0881925586
ISBN-13: 978-0881925586
Product Dimensions:
11.2 x 8.8 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds
Product Review
"As a horticultural librarian, I am constantly looking for good books on palms, and I can tell you that this book is at the top of the list. Not only is it useful, accurate, and authoritative, but the authors' poetic language brought life to the book."—Laurie Hannah, American Gardener, May/June 200 (Laurie Hannah American Gardener )
"This ultimate, expansive resource on cultivated palms will guide horticulturists with all levels of expertise Highly recommended."—S. C. Awe, Choice, September 2003 (S. C. Awe Choice )
Product Description
Cowritten by the author of the award-winning The Tropical Look, An Encyclopedia of Cultivated Palms offers a definitive account of palms that may be grown in the garden and landscape. Because palms are often underutilized as a result of their unfamiliarity --- even to tropical gardeners --- Robert Lee Riffle and Paul Craft have exhaustively documented every genus in the palm family. Approximately 890 species are described in detail, including cold hardiness, water needs, height, and any special requirements. Generously illustrated with more than 900 photos, this volume is as valuable as an identification guide as it is a practical handbook. It even contains photos of several palm species that have never before appeared in a general encyclopedia. Interesting snippets of history, ethnobotany, and biology inform the text and make this a lively catalog of these remarkable plants.
Reader Reviews
If you have trouble making up your mind, this otherwise excellent guide will frustrate you. There are 2,500 species of palms in the world, and Floridians Robert Riffle and Paul Craft almost never met one they didn't like -- a lot. Like mothers who love all their children but have a favorite, Riffle and Craft do praise some palms more than others. This is what they have to say about Cyrtostachys renda from Southeast Asia: "The slender diaphanous trunks are heartbreakingly beautiful and so thin and lissome as to often bend as if they were long stalks of big blossoms in a bouquet. . . . The younger stems add incredibly beautiful tiers of leaves from top to bottom; however it is the magnetic attraction of the long, red crownshafts that makes this species irresistible." Not every entry in "An Encyclopedia of Cultivated Palms" involves quite so much heavy breathing. Of the Samoan palm Clinostigma samoense, they say merely, "There is no more beautiful palm species." But they say that about lots of species. Ceroxylon quindiuense of the Columbian Andes, for example, is the tallest palm in the world, and Craft and Riffle label it "beyond spectacular." In truth, they make the reader believe that palms are underappreciated. For a plant family that is the essence of the tropics, it is surprising how few species like real heat. Like humans, almost all palms like to be warm but not hot. Only a few can stand even a short while at below freezing temperatures, but equally few are able to stand the scorching desert the way the date palm can. Hawaii would have been a paradise for palms, but only one or perhaps two ever made it here on their own. It is still undetermined whether the coconut floated here by itself or came with the Polynesians. The only native palms are the Pritchardias, all evolved from (probably) one migrant that made its way up from somewhere in the South Pacific. Once here, Pritchardias radiated into more than two dozen species, but many of these are either extinct or heading that way. They are commonly called fan palms, or loulu in Hawaiian, and a few species are regularly encountered in landscaping. Many, many of the species in this encyclopedia are either extinct in the wild or probably going. The center of palm extinction is Madagascar, where a rapidly expanding, desperately poor population is eating its way through its forests and the 200 species of native palms. Elsewhere, the expansion of agriculture, coastal development and an extravagant taste for eating the growing tips of large trees are threatening many species of palms. There is -- or was -- a palm for just about every situation between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, from salty marsh to high desert, though rainforest is the favorite setting. Mature palms range down from Ceroxylon's 200 feet to just a few inches. The longest, some of the rattan palms, grow over 300 feet, but they have to climb over other trees. Palms are amazingly spindly. Even the most robust come nowhere near the girth of deciduous trees like, say, monkeypod, and some species in New Guinea are more than 500 times taller than they are thick. How these hold themselves up is a wonder.
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An Encyclopedia of Cultivated Palms
by Robert Lee Riffle and Paul Craft
Available from Amazon
Price: $31.57
on 6-25-2008
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