Identifying Trees of the East: An All-Season Guide to Eastern North America

I bought this as a Christmas Gift for a family member , however after actually HANDLING & looking through this Book ? I’m going to BUY a second copy to use myself to have on hand !! This is a Great little book & just Far FAR Better than I expected, Highly recommended A+A+A+A+A+

The organization of this book is absolutely idiotic. It makes it very hard to browse if you already have a rough idea what type of tree you're looking at. Most decent guides will at least group species by the genus. This book is alphabetized by part of the common name. It's confusing because paper birch, river birch, sweet birch, and yellow birch will all be grouped together under "Birch", however, under "Walnut", you find only black walnut. Juglans cinerea (also known as white walnut) is found in the B section under "Butternut". Compare this to Pecan, which is found under the "Hickory" section. You'd expect that Populus grandidentata, P. deltoides, and P. alba would all be in the same section. Oh, no, my friend. That would make too much sense. You have to look under "Aspen" for P. grandidentata, "Cottonwood" for P. deltoides, and "Poplar" for P. alba. Here I am looking for Acer negundo in the "Maple" section. Nope, that's under "Boxelder". Stupid stupid stupid! Different people call things by different names, which is why you never ever ever ever ever ever sort by common name. At least group the gymnosperms together. You'd think that bald cypress and pond cypress would at least be grouped under a "Cypress" section, but no. Bald cypress is on p. 150, but pond cypress is all the way on p. 346. Seriously, what the heck is up with this?!In certain places, it also lacks crucial images. Some of the oaks lack good pictures of the leaves. Interestingly, for whatever reason, the oaks were organized into a red oak section and a white oak section.There are also many species which are only found in the identification key and have no dedicated description page in the book. It would have been really nice if the author had bothered to put the scientific names in the key for this reason. There are many more species which simply aren't found in the book at all. I found records confirming the presence of Quercus incana and margarettae in my local area. These are not in the book. Neither is swamp dogwood. Neither is Carya pallida. Some common ornamentals are documented, but many are not. Crepe myrtle is pretty common. There's simply a lot of stuff that should be here which isn't.

This is one of the better tree ID books I've found. It's not terribly comprehensive in pictures or ID, but I did enjoy the writing style throughout.My biggest qualm about this book is that there really was not good or definitive photography for many of the species. For instance, I can't remember the exact pages but I saw this a few times- there would be ONE picture of a certain kind of tree (appeared to be a cell phone picture), then they would crop a close-up of the bark from that same exact picture and pass that off as a bark image. I'm sorry, but that's really talking down to your readers. Don't pretend that you have pictures of the leaves, bark, and full tree when it's just ONE picture with blown-up sections (without higher resolution) of that same picture.That annoyed me to such a degree that I sent the book back. I'd rather they were honest and just had the one picture in those cases. Preferably they'd go out and grab the missing pics!Signed, grumpy old man who got old before his time due to inconsistent tree profile comparisons.

Contains descriptions of 134 Eastern tree species. For each, there is one page with a detailed description and distribution map, and a facing page with photos of the leaf and the entire tree (each page with 5 or so separate pics). There is also a special chapter on identifying deciduous trees in winter and one devoted to leaf identification. So this is overall quite a nice book, with coverage of most trees one is likely to see, but not shrubs or cultivated trees in towns. Compare this to the Peterson field guide to Eastern trees, which includes 455 species is actually more compact, and has many more exotics. For instance, you will find a bunch of palm species there that have been imported into Florida, though not included in Williams. The latter, however, has much shorter descriptions and no photos for many species, so accurate identification is harder, and you learn much less about each tree. The Williams book is copyright 2017, Peterson---much older, 1988. The same remarks apply to their respective two books on Western trees. What to do? Get both of them.

The photos are a great help in identifying trees by showing leaves, bark and other features. There are maps showing the location of various species.

This book has been a huge asset to us for identifying trees on iur property.

I was looking for good tree identifier book, this is it.

Description of trees without leave is a great focus in this book and it's extremely helpful. As a bowl turner it would be helpful to have a wood grain image or two. However once you're that close you can web search.

I live on the east coast of canada and this book is O..K...for my area. Book is nice- good navigation. Good photos. Nice little book. AS I said though, many trees not found where I live but still useful!

Each guide has strengths and this one has excellent bark\leaf photos. Really useful for identifying winter silhouettes.

Very informative. Pictures great.