The Plant-Book: A Portable Dictionary of the Vascular Plants Mabberly, D. J. 1997. ISBN 0521-41421-0 (cloth US$49.95) 858 pp. Cambridge University Press, 40 West 20th Streeet, New York, NY 10011.
- If you are like me, your original 'Mabberley' is probably pretty worn out and you may wish to replace it. Now would be a good time. The new edition, published ten years after the original, contains almost 2,500 additional new entries and the systems of classification have also changed, largely to reflect recent treatments edited by Kubitzki. The system of Crabbe, Jermy and Mickel for the ferns and other basal vascular plants has been abandoned, as have large parts of Cronquist's 1981 system. A synopsis of the taxonomic arrangement (pages 771-781) is a useful 'time slice' of a mid-1990s classification. Curiously, the new edition has hard covers with squared corners and the pages now have crudely-rounded comers, versus the original soft and rounded covers with squared pages. The book weighs less than the original despite being 150 pages longer, becoming that little bit more portable. Send your congratulations to Mabberley by purchasing a copy. It may encourage him to produce a third edition. - P. Mick Richardson, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis