Conifers Around the World. 2 vols. 2011. ca. 3000 col. photogr. 1089 p. 4to. Cloth.

In 1975, dendrologist Zsolt Debreczy and nature photographer István Rácz (then still a university student) set themselves a goal: to search out and document all the conifers in the world's temperate zones and their adjacent regionsif possible in their most pristine natural habitats. Over the next thirty years, and with the eventual assistance of over a hundred nature-loving volunteers, generous financial supporters, and field associates from innumerable regional/local institutes and organizations, Debreczy and Rácz spent almost 2,000 days (over five continuous years) in the field on the trail of conifers. They were able to visit and document the world's most inaccessible conifer taxa and to include the accompanying flora and vegetation in their documentation. Theycompiled a collection of 340,000 photographs representing thousands of plant taxa, backed with precise documentation. In Conifers Around the World they present more than 500 species of conifers in 56 genera, including several that were new toscience. This enormous collaborative effort has resulted in Conifers Around the World, a comprehensive, consistently illustrated color encyclopedia of temperate-zone conifers. The two volumes offer an in-depth, richly illustrated, 86-page introduction to conifers and the regions to which they are native,a 44-page chapter on the 7 conifer families and 56 genera discussed in the book, containing over 1200 detail drawings including a 6-page graphic essay of the pollen cones of each genus, the species plates, arranged geographically into 11 regions, each the wild. A brief text accompanying each plate provides essential descriptive and historical information. (The Appendix in Volume 2 contains images and very short descriptions of 28 additional conifer taxa.), 175 habitat photographs showing the most picturesque conifer habitats on five continents, a first-ever bark gallery containing 646 color photographs taken in the wild, 474 distribution maps that provide a visual image of the natural range of each species discussed.