A Flora of Southern Illinois
Robert H. Mohlenbrock & John W. Voigt
paperback, 0-8093-0662-X, $19.95
400 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, illus.
published February 1974
Botany
A Flora of Southern Illinois has been prepared for use by anyone having an interest in our native flora and who has some introductory study of botany. The book will be of particular use to workers in the applied fields of biology, such as conversation, wildlife, forestry, and agriculture.
This book is still another effort to avoid or overcome the monotony of anonymous scenery. It will help the uninformed to the pleasure of recognition and to develop an appreciation for nature's forms and their botanical, geographical, and historical relationships.
Southern Illinois as treated in this work encompasses the southern twelve counties. The southern boundary of the area is the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. These rivers also mark the eastern and western borders respectively. The northern boundary is a line running from northwestern Randolph County eastward along the 38th parallel.
The Southern Illinois area comprises 4,355 square miles which is about equal to that of the state of Connecticut (4,965 square miles). This twelve-county area has three neighboring states at its borders and is within one hundred miles of five states. This location is most favorable to floristic richness since some of these states are southern and the area is between or at the convergence of several imporatant migration routes.
Climate and other conditions work together in setting the limits of where certain plants shall grow. Some plants grow only in groups of their own kind while other plants of many different kinds grow together in various combinations. These groups of plants which are recognizable units are called communities.
Some of the more easily recognized plant communities of the Southern Illinois area are those of the following habitats: moist ravine forests; moist ditches; swamps; marshes; sink-hole ponds; stream beds and sandy river banks; hill prairies; and rocky slopes and ledges of variable aspect made of both limestone and sandstone. A few springs and caves occur, and numerous overhanging rock-ledges are known. A large number of introduced species have been recorded. These have for the most part been found in larger cities, Carbondale and Murphysboro, and along railroads and highways.
"This attractively styled manual will be of interest to botanists in several Midwestern states, since the flora of southern Illinois includes a considerable number of different floristic elements which grow in a rather wide range of habitats. The handsome printing and well-selected photographs should add considerably to the appeal of the book for students...The authors have certainly succeeded in their goal of publishing a book which will interest amateur naturalists as well as applied biologists. It is hoped that other regions in the Midwest may someday be supplied with floristic treatments as well done as this one."
--The American Midland Naturalist
