Nature Field Guides

The ultimate bee book for bee enthusiasts and experts alike

The Bees in Your Backyard provides an engaging introduction to the roughly 4,000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field.

The book features more than 900 stunning color photos of the bees living all around us--in our gardens and parks, along nature trails, and in the wild spaces between. It describes their natural history, including where they live, how they gather food, their role as pollinators, and even how to attract them to your own backyard. Ideal for amateur naturalists and experts alike, it gives detailed accounts of every bee family and genus in North America, describing key identification features, distributions, diets, nesting habits, and more.

Provides the most comprehensive and accessible guide to all bees in the United States and Canada

Features more than 900 full-color photos

Offers helpful identification tips and pointers for studying bees

Includes a full chapter on how to attract bees to your backyard

-- "The Chronicle Herald"

Continuing a tradition that began in 1842, this book examines 24 localities of particular interest to mineral collectors. These localities are organized by how they occur (in sedimentary rocks, in crystalline rocks, in fractures)--a new approach that brings coherence to relationships among similar localities. For each locality, its significance to specimen mineralogy, collecting history, geological setting, origin, and a thorough description of the minerals of particular interest to collectors are presented, based on the latest research and nomenclature. Over 150 clear color photos show some of the finest specimens ever collected from each locality. Similar New York state localities are listed for each featured occurrence. While the GPS coordinates for each locality are provided, this is an introduction to what minerals occur in the State of New York, how beautiful they are, and why they are so interesting. Why have a mere field guide when you can have so much more?

Wild spinach about 7 feet tall and fully mature. Well-fed wild spinach is well-branched and produces a huge quantity of seeds when mature. The leaves are still edible at this stage but are reduced in quality, taking on a somewhat off-flavor. According to research on other mature plants, the leaves on these older plants retain most of their nutrients and phytochemicals as long as they are still green. (Left: The author stands in for perspective, 2006.)

Imagine what you could do with eighteen delicious new greens in your dining arsenal including purslane, chickweed, curly dock, wild spinach, sorrel, and wild mustard.

John Kallas makes it fun and easy to learn about foods you've unknowingly passed by all your life. Through gorgeous photographs, playful, but authoritative text, and ground-breaking design he gives you the knowledge and confidence to finally begin eating and enjoying edible wild plants.

Edible Wild Plants divides plants into four flavor categories -- foundation, tart, pungent, and bitter. Categorizing by flavor helps readers use these greens in pleasing and predictable ways. According to the author, combining elements from these different categories makes the best salads.

This field guide is essential for anyone wanting to incorporate more natural and whole foods into their diet. First ever nutrient tables that directly compare wild foods to domesticated greens are included. Whether looking to enhance a diet or identify which plants can be eaten for survival, the extensive information on wild foods will help readers determine the appropriate stage of growth and how to properly prepare these highly nutritious greens.

John Kallas is one of the foremost authorities on North American edible wild plants and other foragables. He's learned about wild foods through formal academic training and over 35 years of hands-on field research. John has a doctorate in nutrition, a master's in education, and degrees in biology and zoology.

He's a trained botanist, nature photgrapher, writer, researched, and teacher. In 1993 he founded the Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables along with its educational branch, Wild Food Adventures.

John's company is based in Portland, Oregon, where he offers regional workshops, and multi-day intensives on wild foods.

For more information, see www.wildfoodadventures.com

A pocket guide to identifying native ferns that grow in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, and eastern Canada. Like other plant guides in the "Finders" series, "Fern Finder" is a dichotomous key, which leads the user step-by-step through a series of choices to the species being identified. Heavily illustrated with line drawings.