Which cactus book?

[McFarland]

Hi all!

Recently I have come to the conclusion that I really really really need one of those huge cactus reference books, and seeing as Xmas is coming up

Could everyone recommend the most recent/best cactus book, bearing in mind I will probably be getting some of the specialist books like the echinocereus, ferocactus etc books

Hope someone can help!

Cheers,
sachi

[Lithos]

Backeberg, Borg, Benson, The NCSS Journals, ASPS journals...............

[McFarland]

Hi Lithos, after looking up the names etc so far I have found:

L. Benson "The Cacti of the United States and Canada"
D. Hunt "The new cactus lexicon"
E. Anderson "The Cactus Family"

do you have any of these and can offer me your opinion?

[DaveW]

Hi Sachi,

I have the last two and would always prefer the New Cactus Lexicon over Anderson's book, which whilst adopting the same classification as in the Lexicon did not really revise their descriptions to include the plants reduced to synonymy. Anderson's is better on the North American plants than the South American ones whereas the Lexicon is good on both. Though I have criticisms of the partial synonymy of the text volume of the Lexicon, the pictures volume is superb and the most comprehensive set of illustrations of the Cactaceae ever produced.

DaveW

[Paul in Essex]

FWIW I was recently in your position and decided on the New Cactus Lexicon which I am gradually supplementing it with the smaller specialist books as my interest develops and narrows. Nomenclature is a thing, I guess, but it is generally easy to find the plant you are looking for with all the cross references etc.

[Tony R]

FWIW also, Sachi, here is the discussion we had with Paul a while back ....

http://www.bcss.org.uk/foruma/viewtopic ... 1&t=144435

Regards,

[anders]

Benson's book is detailed, but has a few drawbacks. For example, most cacti that I am interested in are excluded for geographical reasons, and most of the photographs are b/w.
Of those you listed I would choose NCL as a general cactus book. The descriptions are extremely brief, but it has far more photographs than The Cactus family, and that is worth a lot to me.

[lobman]

Yes I would agree , the most up to date modern tome is the NCL ; the slightly earlier Cactus Family I found to be full of inaccuracies and contradictions , even within its own terms of reference , particularly for the south American cacti . Unfortunately this pricey volume probably used up a lot potential sales of the NCL

If you had ten or twenty pounds left over , I would still recommend a copy of Backebergs Cactus Lexicon as a second hand copy , obviously its not right up date with new descriptions , but the concise descriptions of sp actually have very little left out , so are handy for identifying plants that have been reduced to synonymy in the N C L

After that it is just the case of adding to your library with any monographs that cover your own interests ,( which judging by your photos are very broad ! ) or or others you come across at low prices . One thing that I personally would not recommend is acquiring loads of general books on cacti and succulents , as many are quite heavily plagiarised , and as your knowledge grows you simply hardly ever use them .

[Phil_SK]

It depends a bit on where your interests lie. The NCL is great (there is supposed to be a 2nd edition some time in the next decade if you'd prefer to wait!) but you are paying extra for bits you probably won't use much. Are you likely to grow, or want to know about, Leptocereus or Praecereus? And if you're likely to get more specialist books on your favourite genera then maybe a multi-book strategy might be better.

I still think 'Cacti: the Illustrated Dictionary' by Rod & Ken Preston-Mafham is a great book. It only covers the more popular globular genera (+ Echinocereus) but it does those genera quite thoroughly, with a photo of most of them and a short description (sometimes very short). It has a fairly thorough synonymy too. It was a popular book in its day and if Edenbridge have a branch library I'd be surprised if it wasn't in there.
For a general glance at some of the other, less common genera, and in far less detail, 'The Cactus Handbook' by Erik Haustein is good value given the secondhand price it seems to trade for. It's one of the few general cactus books that I still find worth consulting, having grown out of the others I've acquired over the years.

Both are quite old now and out of print but available without too much hunting around for a fair price, leaving Father Christmas room for something else. If you need to hunt down synonyms, Daiv Freeman is slowly building up his database of them at cactiguide

Make sure you've had a thorough rummage through http://cactuspro.com/biblio/doku.php too.

[RichardM]

Still nothing worng with The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cacti by Charles Glass and Clive Innes, that was my first serious cactus book and the nomenclature within still holds very well i think. Lots os super pictures too