Nature awaits discovery at almost every turn in the complex ecosystem of Washington, D.C. In parks large and small, within the District's gardens, and on public streets, there is tremendous biodiversity. In Field Guide to the Natural World of Washington, D.C., naturalist Howard Youth takes us on an urban safari, describing the wild side of the nation's capital. Beyond the abundant wildlife that can be seen in every neighborhood, Washington boasts a large park network rich in natural wonders. A hike along the trails of Rock Creek Park, one of the country's largest and oldest urban forests, quickly reveals white-tailed deer, eastern gray squirrels, and little brown bats. Mayapples, Virginia bluebells, and red mulberry trees are but a few of the treasures found growing at the National Arboretum. A stroll along the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers might reveal stealthy denizens such as bullfrogs, largemouth bass, and common snapping turtles. Detailed drawings by Carnegie artist Mark A. Klingler and photography by Robert E. Mumford, Jr., reveal the rich color and stunning beauty of the flora and fauna awaiting every D.C. naturalist. Whether seeking a secluded jog or an adventurous outing, residents and tourists alike will find this handsome guide indispensable for finding oases away from the noise of the city.

This is an essential reference for describing, measuring and classifying the foliage of flowering plants. The presented system provides long-needed guidelines for characterizing the organization, shape, venation, and surface features of angiosperm leaves. In contrast to systems focusing on reproductive characters for identification, the emphasis is on macroscopic features of the leaf blade including leaf characters, venation, and tooth characters. The advantage of this system is that it allows for the classification of plants independently of their flowers, which is especially useful for fossil leaves (usually found in isolation) and tropical plants (whose flowering cycles are brief and irregular, and whose fruits and flowers may be difficult to access). An illustrated terminology including detailed definitions and annotated illustrations is the focus of the classification system, the aim of which is to provide a framework with comparative examples to allow both modern and fossil leaves to be described and classified consistently.

With a parallel rise in DNA testing and widespread critique of police violence, civil asset forfeiture, and a host of other issues related to the American justice system, more and more attention is being paid to the issue of wrongful conviction and exoneration. In this innovative new work, artist Julie Green asks a simple question: when you’re stepping out of prison after spending years incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit, what’s the first thing you want to eat?   From the small details of life at such a moment, a vast new landscape of the world can emerge, and that is the core concept of First Meal. Against a backdrop of the flawed American legal system, something of beauty, pain, hope, and redemption can be found, centered around a seemingly simple question and response. The idea that a single meal can have huge meaning, or that food can have deep cultural and emotional resonance, is hardly new. The prison tradition of offering a condemned person a meal of choice before execution was long part of the media coverage of the death penalty, and has been explored as well by psychologists, documentary filmmakers, and others. Writers from Proust to Michael Pollan have explored the idea that food is never just food. Food is memory, emotion, and meaning.   Green began First Meal in 2018 and partnered with the Center on Wrongful Convictions, part of Northwestern University’s School of Law, to gather the details of these food stories. As incorporated in the paintings, those exoneree stories are captured in the small details: state birds or flags from where the conviction took place, thumbprints representing DNA analysis, sentence dates, glow-in-the-dark skylines, and other symbols that work together to provide rounded portrayals.   Green’s paintings are paired with narrative accounts of those meals, written by Kirk Johnson, a former New York Times reporter, and drawn from the release questionnaires and, when exonerees consent, from follow-up interviews with them and their families and legal teams. The synthesis of art and text brings tells these intimate, often wrenching stories of gratitude, grief, astonishment, disbelief, euphoria—often all combined into one moment—in a unique way. First Meal seeks to inform and spread awareness, but also serve as a celebration of the stories, freedom, and human interests that unite us all.

Published in Association with the New York Botanical Garden

The Manual of Leaf Architecture is an essential reference for describing, comparing, and classifying the leaves of flowering plants. This manual, illustrated with dozens of line drawings and more than 300 photographs of prepared stained leaves, provides a framework with comparative examples allowing consistent and detailed description of both modern and fossil leaves. This one-of-a-kind resource will be invaluable to a broad range of people who work with plants, from paleobotanists to systematists to tropical ecologists.

The Manual allows for the description and identification of plants independently of their flowers, offering especially useful assistance in the case of fossil leaves (usually found in isolation) and tropical plants, whose flowering cycles can be brief and irregular, and whose fruits and flowers may be difficult to access. It provides long-needed guidelines for characterizing the organization, shape, venation, and margins of the leaves of flowering plants.

Beginning with a set of illustrated definitions of leaf characters, this manual proceeds to define and illustrate the variations on each of these characters. The system presented here is based on a widely tested scheme but has been significantly expanded and refined through the detailed examination of thousands of living and fossil leaves.