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Lichens - an Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species
Field Mycology Volume 6(4), October 2005
BOOK REVIEWS Lichens - an Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species, 5th Edn. Frank S. Dobson. Richmond Publishing, Slough (2005), 480pp. full colour, A5. Hardback ISBN 0 85546 096 2, £45.00. Softback ISBN 0 85546 095 4, £35.00. his well-known work, first published in 1979, has been going briskly through new editions. The third (1992) covered under 500 species (out of 1400 then British) with only eight pages in colour.The fourth (2000) was a major advance: 720 species, colour photos throughout and detailed British Lichen Society distribution maps; it has quickly sold out. This new edition looks at first sight little different from the fourth but is in fact 48 pages longer and covers 850 species (out of a total now estimated at 1800), with nomenclature updated to reflect the recent Checklist of Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland (Coppins, 2002). If you already own the fourth edition, this is hardly a ‘must buy’. A few more species are illustrated and mapped but many of the 130 new ones are treated only in brief notes under a near relative. If on the other hand you only have the third edition or earlier, you need this new one. For each species the text, picture and map are all now far more informative. There is a short introduction to the much neglected algal partners of lichens. Generic names are now explained; we learn for instance that Caloplaca is a ‘beautiful patch’, and Cladonia ‘branchlike’ (as in ‘clade’, a branch of a phylogenetic tree). If you don’t own any previous edition the issue is simple. Do you seriously want to learn to identify the commoner British lichens? If so this book is designed for you; moreover there is no other. Popular ‘mosses and lichens’ nature guides give too few species, with no clues to what’s missing. At the other extreme the Lichen Flora of Great Britain and Ireland (Purvis et al., 1992) is emphatically not for beginners. [On lichens I write as a beginner; buying books isn’t enough, you have to use them!] Years of user feedback and help acknowledged from many colleagues have combined to make this work now high on usability and low on errors. All the commoner species are covered. There is a very practical set of ‘lateral’ keys to genera, exhibiting no elegant taxonomic framework, but designed (as all keys should be) with the sole aim of helping their user get to the right place. In the same spirit the photos are stated to show each species as typically found rather than at its most opulent. My one criticism concerns the layout of the introductory material which has grown piecemeal through the editions. It now exhibits an uneasy mix of formats that lets down an otherwise visually attractive volume; the generic keys in particular have become severely cramped. Frank Dobson has a unique mix of skills as publisher, photographer and lichenologist. We are lucky that he has devoted them all for so long to the cause of helping people identify lichens.
T
Alick Henrici
140
BOOK REVIEWS Lichens - an Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species, 5th Edn. Frank S. Dobson. Richmond Publishing, Slough (2005), 480pp. full colour, A5. Hardback ISBN 0 85546 096 2, £45.00. Softback ISBN 0 85546 095 4, £35.00. his well-known work, first published in 1979, has been going briskly through new editions. The third (1992) covered under 500 species (out of 1400 then British) with only eight pages in colour.The fourth (2000) was a major advance: 720 species, colour photos throughout and detailed British Lichen Society distribution maps; it has quickly sold out. This new edition looks at first sight little different from the fourth but is in fact 48 pages longer and covers 850 species (out of a total now estimated at 1800), with nomenclature updated to reflect the recent Checklist of Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland (Coppins, 2002). If you already own the fourth edition, this is hardly a ‘must buy’. A few more species are illustrated and mapped but many of the 130 new ones are treated only in brief notes under a near relative. If on the other hand you only have the third edition or earlier, you need this new one. For each species the text, picture and map are all now far more informative. There is a short introduction to the much neglected algal partners of lichens. Generic names are now explained; we learn for instance that Caloplaca is a ‘beautiful patch’, and Cladonia ‘branchlike’ (as in ‘clade’, a branch of a phylogenetic tree). If you don’t own any previous edition the issue is simple. Do you seriously want to learn to identify the commoner British lichens? If so this book is designed for you; moreover there is no other. Popular ‘mosses and lichens’ nature guides give too few species, with no clues to what’s missing. At the other extreme the Lichen Flora of Great Britain and Ireland (Purvis et al., 1992) is emphatically not for beginners. [On lichens I write as a beginner; buying books isn’t enough, you have to use them!] Years of user feedback and help acknowledged from many colleagues have combined to make this work now high on usability and low on errors. All the commoner species are covered. There is a very practical set of ‘lateral’ keys to genera, exhibiting no elegant taxonomic framework, but designed (as all keys should be) with the sole aim of helping their user get to the right place. In the same spirit the photos are stated to show each species as typically found rather than at its most opulent. My one criticism concerns the layout of the introductory material which has grown piecemeal through the editions. It now exhibits an uneasy mix of formats that lets down an otherwise visually attractive volume; the generic keys in particular have become severely cramped. Frank Dobson has a unique mix of skills as publisher, photographer and lichenologist. We are lucky that he has devoted them all for so long to the cause of helping people identify lichens.
T
Alick Henrici
140