C.P Lyons, Bill Merlees, Threes Shrubs and Flowers to Know in British Columbia

The pictures of the book are very helpful: first, there are coloured photos in the begining. Second, each tree or shrub has at least 3 sketches: the detail of the tree(leaves and branches), the whole shape of the tree and the map of its growing area. I like the sketches in different scales so that I can not only recognize a tree from a close distance, but also know the overall shape of the crown. And the map also shows what kind of climate the plant likes in a more obvious way.

The description of each plant is also detailed. If you find a plant you don’t know, you can try to find in the book.

However, the amout of plants it covers is not enough for this class. And it doesn’t mention the water and soil requirement, USDA hardness zone and what need to consider when growing the plants. It focuses on recognizing plants,  not on designing, planting of maintaining.

Great Plant Picks:

http://www.greatplantpicks.org/plantlists/search

The main page is a menu where I can browse all kinds of plants by certain characters, such as all cornifers, all plants have red foliage, etc. Which is very helpful in landscape designing. The website covers quite a number of plants and cultivars as well. For each plants, there are a short paragraph of succinct description and some quick facks as well as culture notes.

However, it lacks the description of flowers and fruits.

USDA Natrual Resources Conservation Service Plants Database:

http://plants.usda.gov/checklist.html

The website covers most of the plants in north America. Searching is very easy. There are many photos for each plants, which are very helpful.

The advanced search: http://plants.usda.gov/adv_search.html

is useful.

There are “related link” page for each plants. Although the infomation in the webpage itself is far from enough, by clicking on the “related link” page, I can find other infomation needed.