Illustrated Encyclopedia of House Plants

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.

Any book called an illustrated encyclopedia of house plants invites comparison with A.B. Graf’s classics: Exotica and Exotic Plant Manual. Graf first approaches the subject of house plants through generalized discussions of family characteristics, habitats, natural range, and culture. Then, in the context of, and with reference to, these generalized discussions, he comments on particular plant species. The results are reference works that encourage readers to think in terms of the characteristics and needs of whole groups of plants and to develop the kind of sensitivity to cultivated plants that we call “having a green thumb.”

In the book under review (which was originally published as The Weekend Magazine Illustrated Encyclopedia of House Plants), Jud Arnold emphasizes specifics. He provides a full page of information (colour photograph, botanical and common name, origin, description, cultivation, potting, watering, feeding, propagation, special problems) for each of more than 150 common and not-so-common (ginger, laburnum, Korean boxwood) house plants, tub plants, gift plants, and forced bulbs. In general, the information is well presented and sound — although his routine recommendation of the use of malathion, in a work not for the commercial greenhouse but for the home, is questionable. Most of the photographs effectively represent the plants being discussed.

The plant pages, arranged alphabetically by genus, make up Part One. Highly generalized cultural discussions — helpfully printed on off-white paper for case of finding — comprise Part Two; and a glossary and cross-referencing index follow in Part Three. But because there is no system of reference, and no reference made, between Parts One and Two, the book overwhelms with details about individual species rather than teaching about the characteristics, cultural needs, and problems that groups of plants have in common.