Discussion on Welby Smith’s newly published book, Ferns and Lycophytes of Minnesota

Presenter: Welby Smith, State Botanist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

The recorded presentation is available on the Videos page.

Please join us for the upcoming monthly meeting with our presenter, Welby Smith, who will discuss his newly published book, Ferns and Lycophytes of Minnesota. Welby will share some interesting stories about ferns and discuss the book itself and the key people behind this great new resource!

Terrace Horticultural Books (Kent Petterson) will have Welby’s new book available for sale at the meeting, so this will give folks an opportunity to both purchase the book and support a local business. The cost for Welby’s book will be $40 (tax included). Kent from THB will be able to accept payment by credit card, cash, and check.

The following is a book review of Welby’s book by Kent.

Book Review: Ferns and Lycophytes Of Minnesota

A new flora for Minnesota from State Botanist, Welby Smith, has been added to his impressive list of work on plants in Minnesota. Ferns and Lycophytes of Minnesota is the first new field guide on ferns, (more on Lycophytes a bit later) in over 40 years. The book is published by the University of Minnesota (ISBN978-1-5179-1466-0) @ $39.95. Editors have repeated the format of Smith’s 2018 Sedges and Rushes of Minnesota, for this updated flora that incorporates rapidly advancing DNA understandings of these plants.

A previous flora, Ferns of Minnesota by Rolla Tryon was last updated in 1980. An aborted attempt at an update by Warren Wagner of the University of Michigan in partnership with Smith ended in 2000 with the death of Wagner.

With this new flora, Welby Smith has not gone alone with this addition to the Minnesota Biological Survey. Support from the Minnesota DNR, specimen photography by Richard Haug, and also help from a long list of contributors produced this fine addition to our flora. A new complete field guide of appropriate size and heft to species identification. Two pages for each species showing a distribution map, in several cases color illustrations by Smith that are actually photos that look like water color paintings, and color specimen ID photos by Haug for 80 fern species, plus 8 orders of 20 Lycophyte species.

Per Welby Smith, “At the beginning of each chapter is a page showing a collage, then the chapter is broken up into genera. At the start of each genus “subchapter” is a page showing 2-dimensional images of a leaf of each species. All the images on the order and genus pages are photographs that I took. Using photo editing software I placed the images side-by-side to show the differences – in typical field-guide style. Every image in the book is a photograph.  For each species in the book, there is a page of field photos. That is, photos of the species in their natural habitat. Rick Haug took maybe 90 percent of these field photos (He’s  the best field photographer I have ever seen.) A number of other people including myself took the rest of the photos.”

You will learn a lot about these plants and find ID help for sure in this clear and well written book. There is no doubt, Welby Smith is a giant in his field. His flora work with books on Orchids, Trees & Shrubs, Grasses and Sedges, and now Ferns and Lycophytes, together represent 40 years of field work and research.  This book is a must have for any plant enthusiast.

Kent Petterson
Terrace Horticultural Books