New York City Trees: A Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area by Edward S. Barnard

From the Publisher

If you're not a tree lover now, this pocket-sized gem — dedicated to the idea that every species of tree has a story and every individual tree has a history — will make you one. Produced in consultation with the City's Parks and Recreation department and the New York Tree Trust, this book is a reference to the stories of New York City's trees, complete with photographs, tree silhouettes, leaf and fruit morphologies, and charming and informative explanatory texts. It is divided into four sections: "The Best Places to See Trees," full of insider's tips and helpful maps; "New York City's Great Trees," a directory of the oldest, strangest, most beautiful trees; "The Tree Guide," arranged for ease of identification by leaf shape and size; and, finally, "Sources and Resources" for future investigation.

With over 700 beautiful color photographs, drawings, and detailed maps, this is the ultimate field guide to the trees of the Big Apple and the metropolitan region.

The New Yorker

While walking in South Africa in 1829, the British missionary Robert Moffat came upon a giant fig tree so large that, according to his report, it housed seventeen huts in its branches. The historian Thomas Pakenham, in Remarkable Trees of the World, spent four years searching for such giants -- "trees with noble brows and strong personalities" -- and recording their mythologies. The baobab, native to Africa, Madagascar, and Australia, was of special interest to him; according to African legend, trees were gifts to animals from the Great Spirit, and the hyena, enraged to be given the baobab, speared it into the ground, leaving its tangled roots to become branches. American trees are equally impressive: one of California's ancient sequoias, the "Stratosphere Giant," stands taller than a thirty-story skyscraper.

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