Lichens of North America
by Mr. Irwin M. Brodo, Ms. Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, Stephen Sharnoff
List Price:
Our Price: $84.73
You Save: $50.27 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $76.29 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Mr. Irwin M. Brodo, Ms. Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, Stephen SharnoffEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-01
ISBN: 0300082495
Number of pages: 828
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Lichens of North America
Book Review: An Excellent Resource
Summary: 5 Stars
As a retired Forester, I am always looking for new things to study and understand. During my professional and personal time in the forests, I noticed lichens but never appreciated them and I knew far too little about their characteristics. During my University years in training, lichens were not recognized as an important component of an ecosystem. They seemed to stand alone as a curious set of plant life, mysterious but more or less useless. These plant forms simply hung around the limbs and stems of trees, or they lived on rocks and sometimes soils and provided a little color accent to the forest I was helping to manage. Irwin Brodo, et al, in the beautifully illustrated tome, The Lichens of North America, help to counter this misconception of unimportance. Over 795 pages of relatively easy to read material, they discuss what lichens are, how they grow and spread, what they have been used for, and review their value in the assessment of air quality. The authors guide the reader through keys that can help interested people identify the lichens that grow around them. The book is beautifully illustrated with hundreds of color photographs and pen and ink drawings. Some small knowledge and background in botany will help the reader to more quickly understand the material but I hazard to guess that any reader can use this reference as a stand alone guide to some of the strangest and most interesting plants on Earth. Anyone who wants to collect and study these beautiful, unknown plants can use this book to advance their own study. As in any publication of this size, there are a few typos and errors but corrections are posted openly on the Web and it is easy to make changes in your own copy. This is one volume that I would recommend to any one who wants to learn more about lichens. The book contains an excellent bibliography. It is well bound and heavy, high quality paper is used. The signatures are sewn together so there is little chance that pages will ever fall out with normal use. It is both a beautiful and helpful book. If lichens are of any interest to you, get this volume for your library.
Summary of Lichens of North America
Lichens are a unique form of plant life, the product of a symbiotic association between an alga and a fungus. The beauty and importance of lichens have long been overlooked, despite their abundance and diversity in most parts of North America and elsewhere in the world. This stunning book - the first accessible and authoritative guidebook to lichens of the North American continent - fills the gap, presenting superb colour photographs, descriptions, distribution maps, and keys for identifying the most common, conspicuous, or ecologically significant species. The book focuses on 805 foliose, fruticose, and crustose lichens (the latter rarely included in popular guidebooks) and presents information on another 70 species in the keys or notes, special attention is given to species endemic to North America. A comprehensive introduction discusses the biology, structure, uses, and ecological significance of lichens and is illustrated with 90 additional colour photos and many line drawings. English names are provided for most species, and the book also includes a glossary that explains technical terms. This visually rich and informative book will open the eyes of nature lovers everywhere to the fascinating world of lichens.This remarkable compendium, the first (and perhaps last) of its kind, gathers current knowledge on the North American continent's store of lichens--those hard-to-classify, symbiotic composites of fungi and other organisms such as algae and cyanobacteria.
Lichens are, admittedly, easy enough to overlook. They stand out in most people's minds only as the orange, green, or grayish patches that festoon rocks and trees in mountain regions. But they are far more widespread than that, writes research scientist Irwin Brodo. Nearly every bioregion has a complement, and the continent as a whole boasts nearly 3,600 species (of about 14,000 worldwide). The first part of this book offers a near-encyclopedic survey of these lichens' form, structure, reproductive patterns, physiology, and ecological role. The second is a keyed guide to the continent's genera and major groups, including descriptions, range maps, and photographs, the last by the noted nature photographers Sylvia and Stephen Sharnoff.
Though far too hefty to serve easily in the field, this fine book deserves a place in the collections of natural historians and plant biologists doing work just about anywhere in North America. --Gregory McNamee
Biology Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Biology Books
Living Planet: Preserving Edens of the Earthby World Wildlife Fund
Crown; Published: 1999-09-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.89
Price in other shops:
Modern Infectious Disease Epidemiologyby Johan Giesecke
Hodder Arnold Publishers; Published: 1994-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $36.00
Scientist's Guide to Poster Presentationsby Peter J. Gosling
Springer; Published: 1999-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $61.34
Price in other shops:
Rivers in Time: The Search for Clues to Earth's Mass Extinctionsby Peter D. Ward
Columbia University Press; Published: 2000-03-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilizationby Kevin Kelly
Perseus Books; Published: 1994-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.99
Price in other shops:
The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms, and the Order of Lifeby Franklin M. Harold
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2001-06-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
The Selfish Gene (New Edition)by Richard Dawkins
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1989-11-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $87.35
Reef Evolutionby Rachel Wood
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1999-07-29; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Biologyby Sylvia S. Mader
McGraw-Hill College; Published: 2000; Hardcover; Book
Anatomy and Physiologyby SEELEY
McGraw-Hill Education; Published: 1999-05; Hardcover; Book
Similar Books and other products
All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushroomsby David Arora
Ten Speed Press; Published: 1991-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.29
Price in other shops:
Outstanding Mosses & Liverworts of Pennsylvania & Nearby Statesby Susan Munch
Sunbury Press, Inc.; Published: 2006-04-15; Spiral-bound; Book
Best price: $19.99
The Kingdom Fungi: The Biology of Mushrooms, Molds, and Lichensby Steven L. Stephenson
Timber Press; Published: 2010-04-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.69
Price in other shops:
Lichen BiologyCambridge University Press; Published: 2008-07-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $59.55
Price in other shops:
Mushrooms Demystifiedby David Arora
Ten Speed Press; Published: 1986-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.94
Price in other shops:
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mossesby Robin Wall Kimmerer
Oregon State University Press; Published: 2003-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.99
Price in other shops:
Mosses Lichens & Ferns of Northwest North America (Lone Pine Guide)by Dale H. Vitt, Janet E. Marsh, Robin B. Bovey
Lone Pine Publishing; Published: 1988; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.92
Price in other shops:
Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest, Second Ed.by Bruce McCune
Oregon State University Press; Published: 2009-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.64
Price in other shops:
Lichens (Smithsonian's Natural World Series)by William Purvis
Smithsonian Books; Published: 2000-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.65
Price in other shops:
Lichens of the North Woods (North Woods Naturalist Guides)by Joe Walewski
Kollath-Stensaas Publishing; Published: 2007-07-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.05
Price in other shops: