For-Mar Nature Preserve & Arboretum Field Guide to Southeast Michigan
| For-Mar Nature Preserve & Arboretum Field Guide to Southeast Michigan | ||||||||||||
|
Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
||||||||||||
|
The For-Mar Nature Preserve & Arboretum Field Guide to Southeast Michigan is a field guide written by James Dake published in 2020.
The book focuses primarily on the flora and fauna of Genessee County, while including some information about its geology and history.
Personal
| Own? | Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
|---|---|
| Read? | Paperback - USA - 1st edition. |
| Finished | 2025-04-29. |
After taking my daughter to For-Mar and going into their visitor center, I saw this book and was impressed by the large variety of photos, so I bought it.
Review
|
Overall: |
|
Good
- The book features lots of large color photos, many of which include useful areas of the subject to aide in identification.
- Because the book focuses on a single county, it doesn't include a wide variety of organisms you're unlikely to see and is instead able to offer a wide range of subjects in the area including trees, plants, animals, fungus, even the geology of the area, which is a rarity in most field guides.
Bad
- The book only gives just enough information to identify an animal. While this is the primary goal of a field guide, I would like to see some additional information.
- The photos aren't as comprehensive as I'd like. For example, the section on butterflies and moths includes either the adult or larval stage, but never both, the same is true for nearly all of the animals which undergo metamorphosis. Similarly, both versions of animals that are sexually dimorphic are rarely pictured, and sometimes it's not even mentioned that they are. This is understandable since the book would have to triple in size to accommodate them, but because of this, a lot of organisms you will see are left unidentified.
- The time line in the beginning goes into a bit too much depth on the minutia of Genessee County, and includes a lot of events that are not relevant to identifying nature. For example, it talks about the Buick factory, a prize winning cow, and Gerald Ford replacing Nixon.
Ugly
- Nothing.
