#BookReview: Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa

Authors: Braam van Wyk and Piet van Wyk
Publisher: Struik Publishers

Indigenous tree identification must be one of the most challenging hobbies to take up.

I became interested in identifying trees in open vehicle bush adventures with avid knowledgeable birders.

Many of the LBJs (Little Brown Jobs) would fly away before I had a chance to identify them. Trees, obligingly, don’t fly off, they give you ample opportunity to observe them and to learn.

There are many and varied books written about our local trees. It makes sense to begin with a simple guide with strong visuals, concentrating much on the shape of the tree rather than getting too technical.

However, every tree fanatic needs a field guide, and The Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa by Braam van Wyk and Piet van Wyk was written with the non-specialist reader in mind.

Species are arranged in 43 groups based on leaf and stem characters, and illustrated by full colour photographs of the plant’s most readily identifiable parts.

Southern Africa has a rich variety of tree species with an estimated 2 100 indigenous species and more than 100 naturalised aliens, and this book describes and illustrates more than 1 000 of these.

Fifteen years after the first edition of The Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa, this second edition has been published.

The new edition is much enhanced by a new 87-page section of full tree photographs, something many of the non-specialist users of the book had requested, which makes good sense as identifying a whole tree from a leaf and a fruit or flower is extremely difficult.

The distribution maps have been updated and the text revised and updated.

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