a key to the woody plants of the new jersey pine barrens by michael geller reviewed in the nature pages

	A Key to the Woody Plants of the New Jersey Pine Barrens by Michael D. Geller Rutgers University Press, 2002	NJ Pine Barrens Ecology
	The Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey, the largest undeveloped patch of ground between Boston and Washington, D.C., is land of sandy soils dominated by short, gnarly pine trees.		A walk in a dense pine woods or through a cedar swamp can be disorienting. It is easy to get lost in the Pine Barrens.
	While there are many plant and field guides to this unusual area, this book offers the first complete set of plant identification keys to all of the woody plants on the Pine Barrens except for a few rare, non-native species. The keys are complemented by more than 50 of the author's detailed drawings of plants like sweet pepperbush, willow oak, huckleberry, smooth winterberry and staggerbush. The dichotomous keys in this book, useful to both professional and amateur naturalists, are divided into winter and summer keys for determining both the genus and the species. The author explains how to "key out" specimens based on their features.
	These keys, if used in a logical fashion, will lead step-by-step to an almost certain indentification.
25 Nature Spectacles in New Jersey			The trees are scattered, thin, and twisted, sometimes covered with lichens. The forest floor is largely onscured by a dense mat of shrubs. Light green lichens, grasses and ferns, pine needles, and sand cover the few open areas...