TREES OF THE FOREST
NEW ZEALAND TREES, by J. W. Matthews, illustrated; A. H. and A. W. Reed; 12/6. ‘THIs book, an identification guide to the commoner trees of New Zealand, is addressed to those people who are without the benefit of a basic botanic
training but who still find pleasure in the study of the native trees. As the editor of The New Zealand Gardener, Mr. Matthews is well known to hundreds of New Zealanders; and as the writer of daily gardening notes and half a dozen popular books. on gardening he is certainly known : to many thousands more — one of his | books, the New Zea- . land Garden Diction- |
ary, has sold 25,000 copies. In this latest book, New Zealand Trees, he has chosen 38 of our bigger trees-one from each of the main genera is the rule, with exceptions for beech and pine, represented by two and three species respectively. The generous-sized book presents a tree to an opening, the illustrations on the left, the description on the right, The illustrations are reproduced by special permission from the celebrated drawings in Kirk’s Forest Flora, published in 1889. As Mr. Matthews says in his introduction, the drawings are in almost every case remarkably true representations of the subjects discussed; where this is not so Mr. Matthews makes clear the fail- | ings. As the book is arranged in alphabetical order it opens nobly with Agathis australis, the New Zealand kauri; and ‘con- | tinues through 80 pages of fascinating information to end. with a short botanical glossary, lists of Maori and common names of the trees, and a full index. Greed makes me wish that the book had been twice or three times its size, and that the specific as well as the generic names of the trees had been explained in all cases. As it is, New’ Zealand Trees is an excellent book to give anyone, beginner or semi-expert, interested in the forest. It remains only to hope that Mr. (continued on next page)
Book Reviews ued from previous
Matthews will follow it with a companion book dealing with the more common
smali trees and shrubs.
J.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 649, 7 December 1951, Page 13
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357TREES OF THE FOREST New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 649, 7 December 1951, Page 13
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