Product Description

Illustrated with 200 color photos, this book offers practical guidance to gardening with the increasingly popular subtropical and tropical plants. The authors describe and provide cultivation information for a wide selection of plants, including palms, orchids, cacti, and bromeliads.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1121428 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

From Booklist
An intriguing realm of exotic plants comes together in Sparrow's user-friendly guide aimed at introducing gardeners to subtropical and choice tropical specimens. Arranged according to groups such as trees, tender perennials, bulbs, succulents, bromeliads, and orchids, these plants promise to bring an unparalleled panache to warm climate gardens or offer knockout performances in seasonal summer displays. A convenient format allows easy access to information on plant material ranging from fluffy flowering acacias and the bold silhouettes of palms to the extravagant perfumed trumpets of shrubs like brugmansias. Structural plant material gives way to categories of plants offering lavish foliage and vibrant blooms, including fruiting specimens like bananas with lush leaves and giant-sized pelican flowers decorating vigorous vines. Species are accorded brief descriptions, while Hanly's accompanying photographs capture all sorts of striking foliage effects and uncompromising floral accents to inspire plant lovers and pique the interest of gardening newcomers. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Provides an elegantly and precisely written introduction to the many ornamental plants grown in subtropical regions of the world." -- Book News, October 3, 2002

From the Publisher
Brilliantly colorful and luxuriant, subtropical and tropical-style gardens are highly popular and becoming increasingly so. This practical book is a guide not only to the range of attractive subtropicals but also to selected tropical plants that can be grown in subtropical areas.

It includes trees and shrubs, palms and cycads, climbers, orchids, bulbs and perennials, cacti and succulents, bromeliads, and a selection of fruit. Descriptions and cultivation information are given for each species.

The book is illustrated throughout with 200 color photographs, making it an important addition to the gardener’s reference library.

Customer Reviews

Mini encyclopedia of garden plants
This is very much a gardening book, offering a selection of the author's favorite plants. The format chosen is a series of brief entries on genera that contain some ornamental species. Each entry starts with a sketch of what the genus is used for, followed by a sketch of some species and what they are used for. A typical entry is a quarter of a page or so. Alternatively such an entry might be described as a few lines on a favorite species, preceded by a few lines on the genus and a few lines on a companion species. Information given is on gardening only and apparently very limited in accuracy (the author proclaims that Coffea has only a single important species!).

One in every two entries is accompanied by a color picture of a fifth to half a page. The pictures are of good quality but printed too small (and too dark?) to make this a coffee table book. The book is neither fish nor fowl. Overpriced, from every angle.

Stunningly clear photos, well-organized descriptive text
Although the focus in on suitable plants for warm climate gardeners, the stunning photos and informative text make this a useful reference for anyone interested in these lovely plants. Organized by type of plant, and well-indexed, the book guides the reader in selecting trees, shrubs, climbers, cacti, orchids, and other types of subtropical plants.Sufficient detail is given in the descriptions to get the gardener well started, and often alternatives are suggested should a particular plant be unavailable. The introduction refers briefly to suitable hardscaping, and some of the photos give examples, although most are close-ups more helpful for identification than for landscape design. For additional information on a number of these plants, see Ornamental Plants & Flowers of Tropical Mexico.

Lovely pictures, sketchy information
Subtropical Plants is a lovely picture book of familiar tropical and subtropical plants. I don't endorse the subtitle: it is more a picture dictionary than a "practical gardening guide". I bought the book largely on the strength of the excellent "Subtropical Gardening", a book that I thought had been put together by the same team (same photographer, different writer, as it turns out). The difference in the names of the titles points out the difference in the scopes of the books. Subtropical Gardening is about gardening in a subtropical style and includes the notion that plants that are not of subtropical provenance can still be used to lend the subtropical effect. Subtropical Plants is about plants that are subtropical or tropical by their very constitution. Sadly, many interesting New Zealand plants are left out (there are no tree ferns, for instance) while more assertively tropical genera like Colvillea, Delonix and Artocarpus are given full treatment. Perhaps the biggest downfall of the book is that full hardiness is presumed for all and there is little discussion as to the climatic limitations of the various plants. This makes it particularly difficult to use in countries like the U.S., where there is a broad variety of climates in which "subtropical" gardening is carried out.
The pictures are generally quite good, but focus on individual plants rather than broad garden vistas. Several are re-crops from "Subtropical Gardening".

One of the amusing editorial goofs in this book is that some computer glitch causes the letters "us" to be transformed to "United States" in several cases. For example, under Araucaria, the paragraph begins, "Sturdy giant conifers make up this genUnited States,...". Under Hymenosporum the paragraph begins, "From subtropical rainforest of eastern AUnited Statestralia and New Guinea,...". I'm always amazed that such obvious mistakes aren't caught by proof-readers and I'm down-grading it a star on account of the sloppy editing.