Its been a few decades since I bought a book on identifying trees and I am about to reinvest.  David Sidley of birdwatching fame has produced an illustrated book on the trees of North America.  I have thumbed through it and I have offered the occasional subtle hint at dinner that if anyone is going to get me something for the holidays, I sure hope its David Sibley’s tree book. It has extraordinary sketches of every tree, including most exotics that now dot the landscape, maps of their occurrence and the current taxonomy or scientific name. Although I do a lot of tree watching throughout the year, I think I will follow the footsteps of a friend of mine who just finished trying to find every local species of tree in one year.

David’s blog is linked to the front page of this blog if you want more info.