CactiGuide.com

Im looking for a good book on cacti,
any thoughts?

Bob

On http://www.amazon.com/ they have about a bunch. I type "cacti" in the t9 search engine or whatever and pulled up SO many, alot of them look great, and you can get most of them used for under $5!

Hi Bob,

There are literally thousands of books on Cacti, but if you are looking for one that covers lots of genera rather than a single one, I would recommend The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cacti (by Clive Innes and Charles Glass). I could not get this in England and ended up buying it from Rainbow Gardens Bookshop in the US. It's a great price too. At least two thirds cheaper than Amazon.
http://www.rainbowgardensbookshop.com/cactush.html

It has over 1200 species photographed and identified.

The Complete Encyclopaedia of Cacti (by Rudolf Subik) is also an excellent book, but in my opinion not as good as the first one.

I know that Daiv would probably recommend the Cactus Family, which is currently the Cactus Bible and shows lots of photographs of plants in habitat. I would love to own it myself, but as a good all round book I would still go for the Clive Innes book.

I have written reviews on a number of cacti books on Amazon.com If you were interested and keyed in The Complete Encyclopaedia of Cacti At the top of my review there is a button [see all my reviews] hit that and most of the Cacti book reviews I have written are on the latter pages of my reviews. It used to be part of my job reviewing books and I can't seem to get out of the habit.

Well you did ask Bob,

All the best
John

You can see my reviews here:


http://www.cactiguide.com/ref/

John is right about my Choice of "The Cactus Family" being my favorite, but it is always best to cross-reference different books and websites. I find the encyclopedia-like layout of "The Cactus Family" makes it an excellent starting point for ID.

Daiv

Hi Bob,

In Daiv's review page he has reviewed Cacti the Illustrated Dictionary (By Rod and Ken Preston-Mafham), this is one of the ones I own myself. Lots of good colour pictures, but if you are looking for columnar cacti you'll be disappointed because there a'int none in it.

John

Thanks Tillie and John
i was looking at the Cactus Family,but now i think i may go with your sudgestion John, and get The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cacti it s under 18 bucks
and that will leave me some money to buy some more cacti


thanks again

Bob

i think i may go with your sudgestion John, and get The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Cacti it s under 18 bucks
and that will leave me some money to buy some more cacti

That makes two of us
I personnelly hate reading but if it has pictures I should be alright

Bill

My two books of choice are:
The Cacti of the United States and Canada, 1983, Lyman Benson. It has over 1000 pages and is complete with distribution maps, b/w & color photographs, detailed line drawings, synonymies, uses, systematics, and most importantly, keys to ALL the cacti of North America, north of Mexico, including Hawai'i. Unfortunately, it are mo be expensive: I looked on Amazon.com just now and they have 2 copies available starting...STARTING at $247. That ain't cheap! Mine was given to me by a professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoces, Texas. God Bless Him!

The other one is regularly available in Texas:
The Cacti of Texas and Adjacent States, by Del Weniger. It is a revised edition of his book The Cacti of the Southwest, another huge book like Benson's, from 1974... I used to have acopy of both, now I have neither. The current edition is self-described as edited for field guide format and covers Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and overlaps into those states. Lots of color photographs.

The only problems with these two valuable resources are that the systematics of the cacti are always changing, and some of the varieties in Benson are full species in Weniger, and vice-versa.

Anyway, I wish there were a photographic lexicon of the Cactales! But can you imagine how much that would cost?!

kari

Actually Kari, there is one on the way!

See previous post:

http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20

I don't think it will be too unreasonable. I will e-mail Graeme again and see if they will have it ready on schedule.

Daiv