Pradhan's book

[Jean Halverson]

My copy of his revised book has arrived, from the NARGS bookstore, so
presumably the others are on their way as well.  After short inspection,
much of it is the same as the first book with some different drawings
and black and white pictures.  He has added elephas and dilatatum to the
species covered, bringing the total to 27.  In his preface he lists some
of the species whose information has been modified based on further
research.

The big differences are a revision of his key, 4 color plates with a
total of 20 pictures on them and a a study on corm characteristics.  The
key looks like it is now based on leaf form and then spathe & spadix and
doesn't use corm/tuber characteristics.  Although I'm no expert at using
keys or keying out Arisaema, the new key appears to be more useable.
When one of my unknown species blooms, I'm not likely to dig up the
tuber to see what it looks like!  He does believe that tuber
characteristics are important to help identify a species and at the end
has a discription of form and color of the sliced tuber of some of the
species.

In answer to some previously asked questions from people contemplating
buying the book:  No, I probably don't need both books but that is
probably true anytime a book is revised.  The revised key and the tuber
description will probably be most valuable to me as I try to identify
species as they bloom and narrow down possibilities for dormant
tubers.  And although the color pictures are small, they are very good
(in my opinion) and since I rely on pictures for preliminary
identification, the more pictures of a species that I have, the better.

Jean Halverson sw Wisconsin, temperatures about 10-20 degrees above
normal so far this fall.