Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel (2004, Paperback)

I've several books to help identify individual plants for my area (SE Missouri)> This book is different! This book traces the evolutionary path of plant species, the basic divergences (grasses/monocots and others/dicots--
single and double leaved seedlings). He continues on from there and especially focuses on practical/survival uses of various families and species-
particalarly the simplicity of recognizing identifying characteristics of those useful flora. A clear fun read! I had seen the book before in a library-"had" to have one of my own...for me it makes identifying the multitude of plants suddenly simpler-- coming from the top down so to speak.
One of my lifelong hobbies is recognizing/naming the flora, fawna and geology of my area; this book is a big, clear, and pleasant help.

Initially, I thought this would be an easy guide to learn botany but it was not. Focused specifically on identifying plant families, this is not a book for a beginning plant enthusiast. It is designed more as an augmentation to other plant guides, in fact, Elpel suggests "Plant Identification Terminology" and "Wildflowers of North America" as specific books to use with his book.

The illustrations are clear, the descriptions of plant families are specific and the book is fairly easy to read. The book is fairly large, slightly larger than 8x10, so it may be cumbersome to take into the woods.