To be published in 14 volumes over the next 12 years, this long-awaited synoptic compendium represents the first and only comprehensive taxonomic guide to the extraordinary diversity of plant life blanketing our continent north of Mexico--including Greenland and the St. Pierre and Miquelon islands. The collaborative effort of more than 30 major U.S. and Canadian botanical institutions, it revises and synthesizes literally thousands of floristic monographs and regional floras published over the last three centuries. But more than that, it distills the original herbarium, laboratory, and field...

Flora of North America, Volume 3, provides information on many of the most familiar wildflowers and trees in North America. Included are treatments of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), with such plants as delphiniums and columbines, and the poppy family (Papveraceae). Most of the important broadleaf tree species are covered, including the oaks (Fagaceae), elms (Ulmaceae), birches (Betulaceae), walnuts (Juglandaceae), plane trees (Platanaceae), and magnolias (Magnoliaceae). Many striking families are covered, such as the dutchman's pipe family (Aristolochiaceae), and the aquatic families...

Flora of North America Volume 27 is the first volume of three on the bryophytes (mosses, hornworts, and liverworts). Thirty-five authors treat the first half of the mosses, including 32 of the acrocarpous families, with introductory chapters on bryophyte morphology, the history of North America floristic bryology, and economic uses. The 84 species of sphagnum, of considerable economic importance, are fully treated. The number of taxa total 37 genera and 621 species. The taxa are fully described and keyed, illustrated with an estimated 136 panels of detailed line drawings of two or...