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  Re: [Aroid-l] Colour Pictures in Aroideana
From: Jason Hernandez <jason.hernandez74 at yahoo.com> on 2011.11.20 at 04:37:18(22344)
I will weigh in on this, too. As one who spends a lot of time in the field, I too, am only too aware of the drawbacks of colour photos in certain applications. Field giudes, for example. A colour photo depicts a specific plant, growing under specific environmental conditions, and most plants have a degree of phenotypic plasticity that can obscure important identification characteristics unless one knows what details to look for. All the technical floras used by professional botanist use plain line drawing for this very reason: a line drawing is based on a number of specimens, averaging out the phenotypic plasticity so as to highlight the characteristics that really matter.

I like to use the example of Peterson's Field Guide to Wildflowrrs of the Northeastern and North-Central United States. In the plate of Prenanthes and similar taxa, the line drawings show details of the involucre, pappus, and similar small but taxonomically-important characteristics of several species. All these species would tend to look alike in colour photos. Indeed, on those occasions when I have attempted to use photo-based field guides, a large number of the descriptions mention that there are several similar species, of which only one is shown. This is so pervasive, I find photo-based field guides nearly useless. Give me line drawings any day!

But people nowadays are so taken with the wonders of digital photography, it seems every new field guide coming out eschews line drawings in favor of pretty, but not very helpful, photographs. I have despaired of ever being able to fill the gap in my field guides: Peterson's has wildflower guides for the Northeast/North-Central; the Great Plains; the Rocky Mountains; Texas/Southwest; and Pacific States -- but none for the Southeast. And every guide to the Southeast I have ever seen uses color photographs and therefore leaves out many similar species. It looks as though I am going to have to pony up for the technical floras for that region -- and they are not cheap!

Jason Hernandez

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