What do publishers have against South Florida?

I have bought many a book on the reputation of its author, on the beauty of its cover, on the reviews on websites, without ever bothering to look at the book myself to see whether it would be useful for me first. And because of this laziness, I’ve had my share of disappointments. Fewer, perhaps, than most, because I’m willing to enjoy a book on its own terms, rather than requiring something of it that it may not be prepared to offer. Nevertheless, I have been disappointed in some quite highly regarded books that, when taken purely on their own terms, are quite blameless, but nevertheless, I blame them for my (qualified) dissatisfaction. Blame, blame, blame!

This first happened to me last year with a big book on insects: Stephen A. Marshall’s Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity: With a Photographic Guide to the Insects of Eastern North America. It’s a big book (736 pages at 8.5×11), a lovely book, but its subtitle is just a plain lie, as the author states in the first few pages. It’s really a book about the insects of NORTHeastern North America, because that’s where the author lives, and that’s the fauna with which he’s familiar. But that sure doesn’t help me with Florida’s insect fauna, now does it? Florida’s Fabulous Insects, a large format magazine style book, just doesn’t really have what I’m looking for…

Well, same thing happened to me this month, with David Allen Sibley’s The Sibley Guide to Trees. Again, a big book, a lovely book, and one that has much more comprehensive coverage than Marshall’s guide to the insects of the (north)east. Unfortunately, once again, I’m undone by my unwillingness to go shopping or do serious research. Because here we have, on page ix, in the very first paragraph of the Introduction, the disclaimer that the book only covers USDA hardiness zones 1-8. South Florida, of course, is zone 10. And, for those of you who, like me, would be too busy even to click the link to the USDA zones, Sibley is even more specific in his disdain for my part of the country:

All native trees are included in the species accounts of this book, except those trees found only in southern Florida, which is home to over one hundred native species found nowhere else on the continent. All commonly cultivated species are covered, but the warmest climates in North America have a progressively higher diversity of cultivated trees and fewer of these species will be found in this guide.

Well, nuts to you, D.A.S.! We here in South Florida have been itching for a field guide like this! We need it! Mind you, I have nothing but praise for Gil Nelson’s Trees of Florida, which has helped me through many a conundrum occasioned by my late-blooming botanical interest, but the convenience of one species on a page with many illustrations in color, by the field guide artist who first got me into the field*, was just too great a promise to bear being disappointed like this. It’s time publishers stopped beating up on this poor benighted wilderness in which I find myself. Please?

*Seriously, I was browsing a used book shop in Van Nuys almost 10 years ago now when I ran into a copy of the Sibley Guide to Birds, and I immediately went out, got binoculars, got my wife, and pedaled down Ballona Creek to enjoy the Great Blue Herons, Least Terns, Whimbrels, and any other bird we could get a fix on. The book was that life changing. And so I had such high hopes for his guide to trees. Oh, well. At least it’ll be useful when I travel, I guess…

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