Wayne - Ask and you shall receive! UC Press does have a digital version of Jepson. I've seen it demonstrated on an iPad at a meeting, and it looks great.
http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/14140/deeper-context-the-digital-jepson-manual/ I also really like An Island Called California by Elna Bakker for natural history reading. -Jeff On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 8:53 PM, Wayne Tyson <[email protected]> wrote: > A "great" guide? I'd like one too, and I live here. Let me/us know what > you find! > > Do you want one with pix or a flora. Lugging around the "new" > Jepson/Hickman requires superhuman strength and stamina. I tried to talk > Hickman into putting it disk form before it was published, but he would > have none of it. I was, as usual, crying in the wilderness--so to speak . . > . > > There's Munz' Southern California Flora, and it stood me in good stead for > many years, but it's no lightweight either, and the nomenclature is not > up-to-date, of course. (Damned taxonomists! I jest, of course.) > > Munz also wrote some regional and "type" (trees, shrubs, wildflowers, > grasses) field guides that were small paperbacks with pix, and they were > pretty good supplements to the floras, but you'd play hell finding, for > example, Stipa cernua ("A perfectly good species," G. Ledyard Stebbins once > told me . . .) in recently published floras--not even under Nasella. > > I'm willing, even anxious, to change with the times, for better or for > worse. I started with a 1928 Jepson--California Flora that I bought from a > bookseller in 1956 for three dollars. I still have it--somewhere. Most of > my books are in boxes in storage, including the Jepson once owned by Sara > Schenk, who gave it to Gerald Charlton, who gave it to me. I wrote a short > piece about it for "Fremontia," the Journal of the California Native Plant > Society, but couldn't find it on-line (I think I wrote it in the 1980's, > but I don't remember for sure). Sara had covered it in awning-cloth, > duct-taped it, and attached grips made from old jeans, including a closure > made from the top button. What places it has been! > > I look forward to being brought up-to-date on a more recently-published > GREAT field guide. Even if it's (ugh) digital. > > WT > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Jensen" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, August 05, 2013 12:26 PM > Subject: [ECOLOG-L] plant field guide for Southern California > > > I just moved from Washington to Southern California and I am looking for a > great plant identification field guide. Would someone refer me to a good > one? > > Thanks in advance! > > Paul Jensen > -- ************************************ Jeffrey D. Corbin Associate Professor Department of Biological Sciences Union College Schenectady, NY 12308 (518) 388-6097 http://jeffcorbin.org ************************************
