Flora of North America, Volume 3, provides information on many of the most familiar wildflowers and trees in North America. Included are treatments of the buttercup family (Ranunculacaeae), with such plants as delphiniums and columbines, and the poppy family (Papveraceae). Most of the important broadleaf tree species are covered, including the oaks (Fagaceae), elms (Ulmaceae), birches (Betulaceae), walnuts (Juglandaceae), plane trees (Plantanaceae), and magnolias (Magnoliaceae). Many striking families are covered, such as the dutchman's pipe family (Aristochiaceae), and the aquatic families Nymphaeceae (water lilies), and Melumbonaceae (lotus).

Identification keys, summaries of habitats and geographic ranges, distribution maps, pertinent synonymies, descriptions, chromosome numbers, phenological information, and other significant biological observations are given for each species. The treatments, written and reviewed by experts throughout the systematic botanical community, are based on original observations of herbarium specimens, and wherever possible, on living plants. These observations are supplemented by critical reviews of the literature.

Flora of North America, Volume 22, is the first of five volumes covering monocots in North America, north of Mexico. The volume comprises of many groups of aquatic plants and the North American relatives of groups that have their greatest number of species located in the New World tropics. These include: the rush family (Juncaceae); cat-tails (Typhaceae); spiderworts (Commelinaceae); aroids (Araceae), and pondweeds (Potamogetonaceae). This volume includes thirty families, representing a diverse range of plant forms from marine Zosteraceae (eel-grasses) to stately Arecaceae (palms), and the naturalised exotic Zingiberaceae (gingers), Heliconiaceae (heliconias), and Musaceae (bananas).

To be published in 14 volumes over the next 12 years, the Flora of North America is an indispensable working resource for anyone with an interest in the distribution, habitat, morphology, and survival of the wide-ranging plant life in North America.

This introductory volume presents information on the physical and biological factors that have affected the evolution and distribution of plant life of North America. Current knowledge on geography, paleofloristics, and human impact is summarized, distilling the original field work of hundreds of contributors.

Beautifully illustrated, almost 100 drawings accompany the introductory essays, taken from various 19th and 20th century works. Chosen to illustrate plants mentioned within the text, they are also historical examples of the style and quality of botanical illustration from an earlier era to the present.

The complete collection will be an indispensable authoritative work for all botanical libraries and departments.

In Volume 2, over 50 contributors exhaustively describe and classify the ferns, fern allies, and gymnosperms of North America. Covering over two dozen fern and half a dozen gymnosperm families, they survey fern species of both ecological and horticultural importance and review such gymnosperm taxa as the conifers--the dominant trees in many forests as well as important timber plants--and cycads, which display significant evolutionary features. In all, the volume assembles 509 species of ferns and fern allies and infraspecific taxa in 70 genera. The editors have revised nearly 80 of these taxa to reflect classification changes since publication of the last standard work on ferns in North America. The gymnosperm treatments encompass 118 species in 22 genera. Identification keys, summaries of habitats and geographic ranges, pertinent synonymies, descriptions, chromosome numbers, and all other significant details are provided. More than 600 distribution maps and 65 illustration plates appear throughout.