Trees of Tomorrow

glitteryv prompted, "Something you're looking forward to (next week, month or year)" and that thing is a new field guide for the trees of Ontario.

I suspect that it has been available, but the official release date is April 1st and I am excited. The book is A Field Guide to Trees of Ontario by James Eckenwalder, Timothy Dickinson, Deborah Metsger, published by the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM does good field guides in my experience.

Prior to the publication of this book - and maybe still, who knows - Trees in Canada by John Laird Farrar has been the book for tree identification in Ontario and the edition that I've used is about an average-sized hardback fiction book and retails for about twice the value of the new ROM guide, which is also set to be a little bit smaller dimension-wise.

Some of the tree ID books out there are absolute bricks and dragging them around is cumbersome - Trees in Canada isn't bad in comparison to a lot of them, but I want a book I can easily wander around a forest with, going up to trees with a ruler and making species identifications. I'm also happier the more region specificity there is in a book, always. So this book that will be lighter on my wallet and in my backpack is very welcome.

I like field guides, and I am optimistic about this one.