A Field Guide to California and Pacific Northwest Forests (Peterson Field Guide Series) - Softcover

Kricher, John C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395928966 ISBN 13: 9780395928967

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998

Synopsis

A detailed guide brings to life the beauty, inhabitants, and various kinds of trees and plants of the Sierra Nevada forests, the California forests, the Pacific Northwest forests, and the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. Original.

About this title

About the Author:

Gordon Morrison is a well-known naturalist whose work has been praised by Roger Tory Peterson as "Marvelous, beautiful, excellent . . . Morrison’s work is so inspiring that I wish such clear material was available when I was slowly learning ecology. . . . We owe a debt of gratitude to Gordon for his interpretive skills as an artist. He is a superb teacher who uses visual methods." Robert Bateman likened his work to that of Albrecht Durer and Andrew Wyeth. Gordon Morrison makes his home in Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Deserts
Three deserts in North America receive virtually all their
precipitation in the form of rain, never snow, and are thus
called "hot deserts": the Sonoran Desert, the Chihuahuan Desert, and
the Mojave Desert (described briefly in Chapter 6, "California
Forests"). Many of these desert areas receive under 10 inches of
precipitation a year. Thus the species that live here must be able to
survive on little water.
Hot deserts typically contain many succulent species,
which store water in their thick, fleshy leaves and stems. Cactus
plants are common here, as well as a diverse array of yuccas and
agaves. The Mojave Desert is dominated primarily by one species of
yucca, the Joshuatree. Some hot deserts have areas where trees manage
to survive, especially the various mesquites and paloverdes. Most hot
deserts receive enough water to support some woody shrubs, especially
Creosote Bush.
Deserts vary with latitude. Those sufficiently far
north receive some winter snow and are called "cold deserts." Lying
between the Coast Ranges and the Rockies is the Great Basin Desert,
the "big brown area" that air travelers see clearly from 30,000 feet.
This vast desert exists because moisture is so efficiently blocked by
the surrounding mountain ranges that very little is left to fall in
most of eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. The
Great Basin Desert is a "cold desert" — though tourists traveling
through Nevada in the middle of summer might disagree. These deserts
tend to be composed of scattered but hardy shrubs such as Big
Sagebrush.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0395928966
• ISBN 13: 9780395928967
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 378
• Illustrator: Morrison Gordon