The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised and Expanded

I had edition one and realized the need to update.....many changes have taken place since edition one, and I realized that with greater scientific inquiry and DNA comparisons that some plant families have been subsumed into others, some families broken up into more families, some genera moving from one family to another, and some species being renamed. I essentially need to reeducate myself if I want to keep current and not become a taxonomic dinosaur. It's all well broken down and thorough here. I am an amateur botanist with a masters in biology. This is probably not the way to go if you have no prior experience with plant taxonomy....as it may be overwhelming. If not experienced it might better work with reduced and simpler dichotomous keying sources specific to a particular region and plant type of interest...for example. I started off with the Pacific Coast Tree Finder, which is simple, informative, and easy to use. For my part, I am interested in doing some volunteer botany walks, so I need to be well updated. For that purpose my familiarity with Jepson 1 will enable me to jump into Jepson 2 relatively easily. The book is also very large. I prefer hard copy over digital, but it's rather large to schlep around with you in the field. I will use hard copy for study at home. I also bought the digital volume and downloaded it onto a tablet, which will be easier to carry in the field. If you are interested in a particular plant region, for example a state or national park or national forest, you can frequently obtain flora and fauna lists that you can use to help you narrow down the plants and fauna to identify, which may facilitate the use of this or of any other taxonomic guide. Have fun.

Very comprehensive book.

I absolutely love the digital version of this book. I travel a lot and it is not very logical to tote around a 1500 page hard cover book so I gave the digital version a shot. On my phone and tablet, the drawings are zoomable and there are hyperlinks in the keys which are fantastic. By using the hyperlinks (I am not sure what to officially call these so I’m going to stick with “hyperlink”) it is easy to go back to the previous major couplet or the next minor couplet when keying. It feels like the Jepson website’s keys are downloaded on my device. I am not super thrilled by the looks of this e-book on the kindle app for my Mac, but I think that is just an app issue since the mobile app looks just fine. The plates are located in the back of the e-book, whereas the hard copy has them with each section. This is not an issue for me since there are, again, hyperlinks in the text so there is minimal flipping though pages. This book is easy to use in this form and it sure beats lugging the hard copy around.

Gotta say - I love this book! I so wish there were versions for other states besides CA but I'll take what I can get. The keys are straight forward for the most part and well written. The quality of drawings were surprisingly good and the taxon descriptions, while not perfect, are well done. If you have taken any college level botany course you should be able to easily use this book and even if you have not you should be able to pick it up (you'll just have to put in some extra work to learn definitions and how to utilize dichotomous keys). If you do limited field work and usually have access to the internet you can access a more up to date, internet version through the Jepson Herbarium EFlora website. With that being said, I still much prefer the hard copy book - even if it is a pain to lug around!

A must-have for anyone who loves botany and plants. A basic knowledge of general botany is desirable to fully enjoy this marvelous manual, but it is not critical. This book is quite the hefty tome, so keep it in mind and go with the digital version if you need it in the field.

I work as a field biologist and am frequently called upon by other members of my team to help ID mammals, herps, and arthropods (they're all more-than-competent birders), which poses no problem for me.However, my botanical identification skills are somewhat rudimentary and I finally decided to break down and add this important tool to my arsenal. I've known of its existence for decades, but have never gotten around to purchasing it until now. I can already see that it will more than fill my needs, not only in identifying individual species, but in recognizing ecological plant communities as well.The section on geographic subdivisions of CA (pp. 35-48, especially the map on page 43) is almost worth the price of admission itself.

Given 3 stars since it is a foundational book. But, times have changed and DNA testing is used for identification and names of plants have changed. Book is very expensive and has limited utility. Nice for professors with a budget to purchase books for them.

shipping used natural material with very little plastic