Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas Online

Shinners and Mahler’s Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas is available online and in-print in a hardback and leatherbound edition.

Shinners & Mahler’s Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas (published in 1999) is the first fully illustrated flora for any region of Texas or adjacent state. It is the most comprehensive guide to a large portion of the diverse plant life of Texas and covers all the native and naturalized vascular plants known to occur in North Central Texas, an area about the size of Kentucky. The book presents information on the plant life of the region to meet the needs of students, teachers, wildflower enthusiasts, gardeners, ranchers, farmers, naturalists, conservationists, environmental consultants, researchers, and the general public. It includes 2233 species, or nearly half of the plants known for the entire state of Texas.

A number of features were incorporated to make the book more useful to non-specialists. Line drawing illustrations are provided for all species, with color photographs for 174 species. The inviting layout, vegetation maps, and extensive introductory materials on the vegetation, geology, soils, climate, and presettlement conditions make the book useful to a wide audience. An excerpt from the introduction on introduced species is available online.

Also of general interest are a number of appendices on topics such as botanically related internet addresses, conservation organizations, taxonomy, phylogeny (evolutionary history), endemic species, changes in scientific names, collecting herbarium specimens, lepidopteran (butterfly and moth) host plant information, books for the study of native plants, suggested native ornamentals, and sources for native plants.

The taxonomic treatments include family and generic synopses, keys and descriptions, derivations of scientific names, characters helpful for the field recognition of plant families, notes on toxic/poisonous and useful plants, and references to supporting literature. For scientists, there is a literature cited section with nearly 3000 references. This is the largest literature compilation to date on the flora of Texas. Online literature cited is available to search for any of nearly 3000 references. The PDF can be downloaded below (“References”).