Customer Reviews
Buyer beware - By: waterfordtilly, 13 Jul 2010 
Unfortunately, although the book's cover & the website description say that it contains a guide to the flowers of "Britain & Europe" - it does not. It only includes Northern Europe, excluding Southern France, Spain, Portugal, Italy etc. etc. etc... It states thisin the inside blurb, which is a little late for an on-line order! It is however a beautiful book, if a little 'technical' for the amateur, but it is not something to carryin your pocket - it weighs 1475gms!
Excellent new field guide - By: C. F. Howat, 20 Nov 2009 
The new Collins guide combines excellent life like illustrations with very good text. Many tips to help identify plants. Hopefully it will encourage people & look at their local flora
Good botanical detail & illustrations - By: IntrestedinNature, 13 Nov 2009 I brought this book as an update to Keble-Martin's "Concise British Flora" which I have always used. I prefer illustrated guides to photographic ones - you can't beat a white background for giving the best sillouette of a plant's outline. It's brief descriptions of individual species are helpful, grouping them as you would expect by family. The keys are also invaluable for identifying plants to species level. However, I think a more suitable title for the book would have been "Illustrated Wild Flower Guide/Key" not just "Flower Guide", which may present initial confusion to those looking for guides on cultivated plants. Minor mistakes, such as the omission of the Sweet Flag (Acorus calamus) inflorescence, & the small circles which give magnified detail to diagnostic features, seem careless. The book also skips over difficult to identify species like Hieracium, giving only one generalised illustation, yet gives space to cultivated Peony (Paeonia mascula), an isolated example of which grows on Flat Holm island. I would hardly describe this species as "naturalised", when it is known only from a single occurrence. This is not a field guild, being far to cumbersome & inappropriately bound, but it is probably the most extensive illustrated guide to British flora currently available, so will make a useful up-to-date reference guide for many. It may also be of interest to know that this guide will soon be availablein a large format addition, so the illustrated plates that have been reducedin size for this addition maybe clearer to see. Some of the earlier mistakes will also hopefully be corrected.
A beautiful new field guide to the flowering plants of Britain and Ireland - By: Christopher J. Sharpe, 04 Nov 2009 I confess to being a field guide addict, so when I this new Collins Flower Guide at the Birdfair, I knew I had to get it. The previous titlesin this series - birds, butterflies & trees - are the definitive guides to their respective groups; indeed Collins Bird Guide,in my opinion, sets the standard as the best field guide to an avifauna anywherein the world. So despite the price, it was not hard to part with the money.
Having field-tested this book at the tail end of the flowering season, I am certainly not disappointed. The book is billed as "the most complete guide to the flowers of Britain & Europe", & it probably is. Some 1,900 species are described & the grasses & ferns are treated to full colour plates. The attractive features of the other guidesin the Collins series - plates & text on a single spread, clear type-face & layout, compact form, excellent illustrations - are all here. The plates are particularly satisfying: beautifully painted, they look to be the most accurate yet includedin a guide of this type. And, asin other plant guides, keys are provided as a more structured way to identify flowers.
But this book faces some pretty stiff competition, namely from Blamey, Fitter & Fitter's Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland & Rose's Wild Flower Key. How does it stand up? I'm a sucker for Marjorie Blamey's illustrations, so I have most of her books & I love Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland, not least as an armchair flora. Rose has long (at least for the quarter century since I took any botany classes) been recognised as the most accurate illustrated field flora - the botanist's guide of choice. Despite its fine illustrations & keys, I am not sure that this current guide can rival either of them. I took both Rose & the Collins guide out into Norfolk & ran several plants - tricky things like umbellifers & crucifers - through the keys & Rose performed flawlessly, whereas the new guide was a little murkier. Some of the illustrations are quite "washed out" or at least not as saturated as others, leading to some loss of details - notablyin the Asteraceaein my copy. Opened the book at the oaks, I noticed that the Sessile Oak caption is missing - admittedly just a detail. In the end though, much as I warm to the new guide, I find that I am carrying Rose rather than the Collins guide into the field when I want a reference I can depend on. Perhaps it's just that when I pick up a guide, Rose fits more easily into my pocket & is a fair bit lighter.
In sum, this is a guide that the plant enthusiast will want to have, but if you already possess a trusted field guide like Rose, you may not want to pay for the more expensive new Collins Flower Guide, beautiful as the illustrations may be. Having said that, I have no regrets at having this handsome new field guide on my shelves - the more field guides the better.
Chris Sharpe, 4 November 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0-00-710621-9
