Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

The cover is once again graced by one of Bonnie Hall’s beautiful serigraphs, Balsamorhiza deltoidea.

At long last, Volume 2 of the Flora of Oregon is finalized and at the printer in Korea! Hopefully, it will be ready by the holiday season, but you can preorder it now. This volume covers the dicot families A–F. There are 39, including Apiaceae (carrot family), Asteraceae (aster or sunflower family—almost a third of the volume!), Brassicaceae (mustard family), Caryophyllaceae (pink family), Ericaceae (heath family), and Fabaceae (pea family). In my announcement after we finished Volume 1 in 2015 (see Volume 1 of the Flora of Oregon is Done!), I said, “Hopefully we can finish the next volume in a couple of years.” Hah! It’s been over 5 years. In our defense, the book is longer (almost 880 pages), covers more taxa (1,668), and has more species illustrated (785). And concurrent with production of the book, OregonFlora (formerly Oregon Flora Project) has also been redoing the entire website (OregonFlora.org), so Linda, Katie, and Thea have been doing double duty.

With the extra time it took to complete the volume, I was able to produce 39 illustrations for Volume 2, well more than I did last time. Marbled ginger (Asarum marmoratum) is one of my favorite species, so I couldn’t let that be skipped. And I’ve frequently studied the large population of the rare green-flowered wild ginger (Asarum wagneri) at Moon Point, so I drew that as well.

The new website is also online as of this week (although there may still be some bugs to work out) and is a treat for all of us interested in Oregon’s flora. Plant descriptions, photographs, maps, and more are all integrated now. There’s information on native species for gardens, more photos and records, and a lot of other goodies. And, best of all from my point of view, you can now create a polygon on the map and see all the plant records (specimens, observations, and photos) within the polygon! I’ve been eagerly awaiting that for years. Check it out at OregonFlora mapping. You can also go directly to a page of species lists instead of having to guess a plant that might be on a species list for that location and hope it shows up on the Atlas. That will be incredibly helpful to me when exploring new sites. That will encourage me to update my plant lists this winter—both for the OregonFlora website and my own!

As in Volume 1, I did all the layout and design and did much of the editing of all the text. Linda and Stephen were gracious enough to add my name to the cover for this volume. I read through every treatment so many times, you’d think I’d have the whole thing memorized (sadly I don’t). I also contributed a little writing to the chapters (as well as “sneaking” in some info about Western Cascade flora into the treatments), used a lot of my photos, and contributed some drawings. I really enjoy wearing so many hats. John Myers is still our principal illustrator and did over 350 beautiful drawings for the book. I hope you’ll all agree it is a wonderful addition to your botanical library and worth every penny.

To order the book, go to the OregonFlora website or directly to the website of BRIT Press, the publisher. Ordering directly from them will give OregonFlora the largest percentage of the price and will allow them to continue their great work. If you don’t already own Volume 1, there is a slightly discounted rate for buying both volumes. We’ve already begun work on Volume 3 (dicots G–Z), so hopefully it won’t be as long a wait!

3 Responses to “Volume 2 of the Flora of Oregon is Done!”