The Sibley guide to trees

by David Allen Sibley

The man who revolutionized the field guide to birds now brings his formidable skills of identification and illustration to the more than six hundred tree species of North America.

Similar in size and format to The Sibley Guide to Birds, the layout for this guide is another triumph of logic and concision. Species are arranged taxonomically, not by features such as leaf shape (as in most other guides), which will enable the user to browse the images to find a match for an observed tree in the same way a birder uses the bird guide. And all pages will follow the same format, allowing the user to pinpoint particular information with ease. David Sibley’s meticulous, exquisitely detailed paintings illustrate the cycles of annual and lifetime development, and reveal even the very subtle similarities and distinctions between like elements of different bark, leaves, needles, cones, flowers, fruit, twigs, and silhouettes. More than four hundred maps show the complete range, both natural and cultivated, for nearly all the species. Issues of conservation, preservation, and environmental health are addressed in authoritative essays.

As innovative, comprehensive, and indispensable as The Sibley Guide to Birds, this new book will set the standard of excellence in field guides to trees.

Genres: Nature, Reference, Nonfiction, Field Guides, Science, Plants, Natural History

426 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2009

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

Can now confidently point to a tree and says “that’s a tree!”
Really making progress here.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sibley's bird guides have become the authoritative field guides to the birds of North America, and with good reason: thoughtful, consistent layout combined with beautiful, precise illustrations and lots of helpful ID notes make for a great experience. So, I was pretty intrigued to find he made a guide to trees. Like the bird guides, it is beautiful and packed with great information (the range maps are particularly useful), but overall it's not quite up to snuff. I've actually been reading the guide (intro, looking up favorite trees, etc) for a few days, but I just gave it a test drive in the field today and found it sadly wanting, especially in comparison the the drier key approach used in my go-to plant guide for this area, Beidleman and Kozloff's Plants of the San Francisco Bay Region. One major problem is a lack of any kind of preview or index system. Sibley's bird guides begin each family or major group with a grid of all the species contained therein, which is pretty useful for giving the whole group a glance and picking out the bird you've got in your binocs, and when this fails those guides are still pretty flippable: go somewhere close to the bird you're looking at (passerines, divers, raptors, etc), start flipping, and you'll see something similar. It's much harder to do this for trees, given their highly variable appearance, so it's hard to narrow down possibilities. Sure it's a pine but... this is the west. There are a lot of pines. Many practical tidbits seem to be lacking as well, like the "hairy armpits" where the veins fork on the underside of a coast live oak leaf, or the way a juniper's berries smell like gin when crushed.

Overall, I think this is a great home reference, but I'll stick to keys in the field.

[Natalya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guide is so much more informative than my thin pocket books. I love the illustrations of bark patterns and leaf variations of common cultivars.

As some of the other reviewers noted, it's not easy to identify a tree using this book unless you already have a rough idea of what that tree might be. So, if you can already distinguish a dogwood from a birch and a birch from a beech, and all you want to do is figure out what kind of beech you're looking at, then you'll like this book.

If not, I recommend starting with a simpler guide like What Tree Is That?: A Guide to the More Common Trees Found in North America

[Candice · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Allen Sibley has done it again! The Sibley Guide to Trees is a thorough guide to the trees of North America. The beginning of the book introduces readers to basic botany and tree identification. The main bulk of the guide is a series of tree descriptions, organized by family. Each description provides the scientific and common names, an easy to read map, anatomical drawings and descriptions and a list of similar species. It is very easy to identify native vs. exotic species by map color and description. Sibley guides always become my favorites!

[katie]

i have this random urge to get really annoying about trees

[jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish that I owned this book, or that I had checked it out from the library during the spring or summer when I could have identified more stuff with it. Regardless, this book is a beautiful guide to North American trees, sorted by families and with a lot of basic/background botanical information in case you don't even know where to start with identification. Hopefully I can revisit it when the trees have leaves, but in the winter it's nice to pour over the illustrations and think about leaves and fruit.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t planning on giving a rating to a tree reference guide, but I’m seeing that some people are saying Sibley’s bird guides were a lot better and this tree book was more of a lower effort cash grab. I don’t know if this is true but I find the idea funny so I’m going to get on the bandwagon and go 3 stars.

[Dan Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this on the wish list list from whence it was plucked (thank, kids!) mostly in the spirit of just adding to my collection of tree field guides. However, its front materials are excellent and included information I had not picked up in several years of reading tree-related books. The main body is well organized, well illustrated, and well written. And there's even a handy "tree watchers" checklist in the back, to track the trees you see in the real world. So I have a strong feeling this will not just be sitting on my shelf looking pretty, but will see active use in the years to come.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve felt this urge to know the names of more native trees lately, and this was the perfect introductory guide. It’s the kind of thing to own and carry around for a while, but for now, Sibley provided a great overview of the distinctions, ranges, and details of many familiar trees in our region.

[Elizabeth Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just reading the introduction gives you a review of all the stuff you were supposed to have learned in 10th-grade biology. I love all the Sibleys.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of Sibley's guides are a great addition to the environmentally conscious library. So vey informative to carry in the field.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illustrations, not photographs. So much easier to see what the important features are. So helpful!

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb reference guide for identifying trees in most of the continental United States and Canada. The illustrations are delightful. Very well organized. XOXOXOs to the author:)

[Alyson]

Comprehensive but no identification key

[Mackay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like his book(s) on birds, this is a great reference for North American trees.

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute must-have for any tree-lover.

[Megan Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite book

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. I want more visuals for the entire trees.

[Katie Lichosik · Rating 5 out of 5]

12/10 amazing book. Illustrations are incredibly useful and accurate. Allen Sibley is also a.wonderful human please support him.

[Jim Angstadt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overwhelming!

[Yvonne Rathbone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love trees and I'm constantly coming back to this guide to identify new ones.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the tree ID book I use the most

[Elise]

Very beautifully done!

[Jared Estes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a disappointing book that lacks all the necessary info and pictures to help the beginner horticulturist or even experienced horticulturist identify trees. I have used this book in correlation a number of times in writing papers, and in the field and time and time again it fails me. Every time i intend to look for some specific info this book does not have it, and the pictures contained within are drawings of only a section of a tree. I promise you that - Allen J. Coombes book 'Trees' is a far superior book, and contains the necessary information for each tree.

[Benjamin Felser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful way to connect with land wherever in N America!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful detail. far surpasses any other guide. i particularly like not having to flip back and forth between the picture and the description (as I do with Peterson's: ). My favorite for trees, but it doesn't do shrubs (in which case I'm stuck back with Peterson's, unless i can find it in Stokes: The Natural History of Wild Shrubs and Vines).

[Ringtail Cats · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guide is comprehensive (has all NA trees), which really distinguishes this book as excellent for me. There may be some alien species the book does not cover, and the ranges for the introduced species are not always perfect, but all endemic NA trees are covered and most have good range maps. I am quite familiar with plant ID but whenever I find a tree I don't know, I always turn to this guide first and figure out the species quickly.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Christmas gift from my very thoughtful friend Elizabeth, Sibley's Guide to Trees is as wonderful as his guides to birds. I've alternated between using this book as a reference and simly just leafing through its pages in adoration of the variety, range, and sheer beauty of bark, branches, leaves, and blossoms.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another book that I should buy.

I checked it out of the library, renewed it twice, and still did not get all of the goodness out of it.

Contains some odd little bits of trivia, like the four ginkgo trees that survived the Hiroshima bomb blast.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sibley Guide to Trees by David Allen Sibley (Alfred A. Knopf 2009)(582.16097). This field guide explains the differences between over 600 species of tree. Maps and identification keys abound. My rating: 6/10, finished 2010.