111 Range and Forage Plants of the Canadian Prairies

Pleasance Crawford is a Canadian landscape and garden-history researcher
and writer and the co-author of Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian
Garden Writing.

The book under review replaces Agriculture Canada Publication 964, Ninety-nine Forage Plants of the Canadian Prairies, by J.B. Campbell, F.K. Best, and A.C. Budd; and Best’s and Budd’s line drawings are retained in the new work. All plant measurements are now metric. The new publication presents the 111 “most economically important of the grasses, herbs not otherwise listed, legumes, poisonous plants, rushes and sedges, and trees and shrubs that occur in the prairie area” of Western Canada. A seven-page illustrated Introduction defines each group and explains its importance to the livestock producer. Then, grouped as listed above, each plant is shown in a full-page black-and-white line drawing, named by common and botanical name, and described according to its distribution, habitat, growth characteristics, palatability, and nutritive value.

The information is easily retrievable by group and plant names. The table of contents lists the groups and all 111 preferred common names, and a “Key to Preferred Common Names” cross-references all the names used. The information could have been made more accessible if additional classifications had also been included: plants for various habitats; plants with creeping roots, fine resistance, and other specific characteristics; information on relative nutritive values; and so forth.