Today I have the pleasure to present a review of a book called Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico. This is a book of photography and interesting facts about the plants you may find in tropical Mexico, especially in the Puerto Vallarta area.
The author is Linda Abbott Trapp, who lives in Puerto Vallarta. She is a professional writer and has authored five other books, including Fresno, Valley of Abundance. She also writes for newspapers about business, the arts, ecotourism, and psychology. She holds a doctorate from Iowa State University and was dean at the California School of Professional Psychology.
Her work with plants is strictly as an amateur botanist and plant enthusiast. According to the book’s introduction, Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico was a project that began in part because she couldn’t find information in any single complete, book about the plants that she was seeing around her home. So she started researching and taking photographs, and the research eventually evolved into the book.
Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico is a compact book (128 pages) of color photographs and information about roughly a couple hundred plants that you’d see on a visit to tropical Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, and in other areas where gardeners may use these tropical plants in landscaping.
One important thing to note about the book is that the information about the plants is very brief. The subtitle of the book is “A Guide for the Curious Tourist or Resident.” From the subtitle, you can tell that this is not intended to be a book for more serious plant enthusiasts. It mainly works as a field guide to quickly and easily identify common plants that you’d find in resort areas in tropical Mexico and perhaps excursions to nearby forests.
The plants are arranged alphabetically based on the most common name for the plant. The information about the plants includes:
1. Common and scientific names
2. Botanical family
3. Use and care of the plants for those interesting in growing the plants
4. Cultivation and propagation tips for gardeners
5. Information on the flower/flower type
6. History, trivia, unusual facts about the plant
As Trapp mentions, Mexico’s biodiversity is astonishing, with roughly 50,000 plant species scattered throughout the country. You can find many of these plants in tropical areas of Mexico. Thus, it would be nearly impossible to produce a book with more than just a few hundred plants and provide a decent level of detail about each plant.
The fact that Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico is so concise is both a strength and a weakness. Trapp is able to include a wide variety of plants in her book, with plenty of attractive photos to help you identify them, but facts that I would like to see, such as local Spanish names or indigenous names, ethno-botanical information, etc. are missing from some of the plant descriptions.
I would have liked to have seen common Spanish names for each plant, as this is a book about Mexican plants. The author says that she did indeed ask locals about common Spanish names, but in some cases they declined to respond. I think with a little extra effort, she could find out these names easily.
Trapp has done a good amount of research on each of the plants, and there is indeed in many cases some very interesting trivia regarding plants’ agricultural and cultural importance.
A strength of the book is the number of photos of each plant, taken from various angles and representing different colors of flowers, and in many cases, wonderful details of unusual plants such as the Heliconia. The photos are generally quite good, although some are a bit sharper and clearer than others.
I was impressed by the number of palm species in the book, and the photos do a good job of showing enough detail so as to easily distinguish one palm species from another.
There are a number of plants found in the book that also double as houseplants in other parts of the world. For example, you can find photographs of the Wandering Jew, Croton, and Candleabra Cactus, all growing outdoors and in many cases in a wild setting.
One curious thing about the book is the inclusion of exotic species. Although some of these plants have become naturalized, I would have liked to have seen more plants native to Mexico presented in the book.
According to Trapp, the plants she selected follow the following criteria,
“I’ve chosen plants closely associated with tropical Mexico in the visitor’s mind, those commonly used in resort landscaping, a few imported plants I was especially charmed by, and some of those plants the visitor or resident might see on a tour off the beaten path as well.”
As a book for the curious tourist or resident, the book works very well as casual reading and as a useful field guide. For those craving more details and information about tropical Mexican plants, you may wish to seek out a book or two with an emphasis on detailed text and facts rather than photographs.
Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico was published by Abbott Publishing and is available exclusively from Sunbelt Publications
Please visit the Sunbelt Publications website to learn more about the book. Sunbelt also has an extensive collection of books about Baja California and Mexico.
