Preliminary:Forestry

[Kokonilly]

It's pretty much impossible to be deathly allergic to anything airborne and live for more than 15 minutes, anyway.

[NYLHVSSO]

You would probably be dead. Does anyone know someone who's deathly allergic to trees?

[purplepeopleeater]

Lol... now this has gone from "can there be leaves" to "is anyone deathly allergic to trees"

haha oops. guess that was my fault... idk i just had allergies on the brain. and no i know no one with deadly allergies to trees. >.<
sigh... i ordered field guides for this event and they are currently LOST the company says that they sent them and the post office has lost them somewhere. gee. at least there is always the internet.

[XJcwolfyX]

What is the best field guide for this event? Aubudon or Smithsonian?

[tornado guy]

What is the best field guide for this event? Aubudon or Smithsonian?

Actually Sibley is my favorite guide. It gives a bunch of details about the leaves, fruit, flower, bark and on a map it shows where across the USA where it is specifically located... The only problem I think about it IMO is that it lacks real photography of the tree.
To your comparison though I would choose Audubon.

[rfscoach]

What is the best field guide for this event? Aubudon or Smithsonian?

Do not even bother with the DK Smithsonian - it's too small and contains trees from around the world, not just North America. As of now I have the Sibley Guide and the National Wildlife Federation Guide. I like The National Wildlife Federation Guide better.

[NYLHVSSO]

I'm going to take a look at the Nat Geo field guide and the Audubon eastern region field guide. The Science Olympiad recommended the Audubon field guides in 2004-5.

[tuftedtitmouse12]

What is the best field guide for this event? Aubudon or Smithsonian?

Do not even bother with the DK Smithsonian - it's too small and contains trees from around the world, not just North America. As of now I have the Sibley Guide and the National Wildlife Federation Guide. I like The National Wildlife Federation Guide better.

Oh oh oh oh oh!!!!!!

I LOVE the national wildlife one
I was comparing it with others
And it looked pretty good
Hurt
And i think there was this other one that had good info but not pictures...
Was it audubon??

[NYLHVSSO]

Audubon had very good pictures.
The tree field guide looks very similar to this one:
(This is the birds one):

For the trees, they have pictures of the leaves, fruits, cones, etc.

[amerikestrel]

Although I personally prefer the Sibley guides, I don't think most people should be relying on their guides for identification if they intend to do well. I don't think I opened my bird guide once at states last year. However, field guides are invaluable while studying if they point out defining characteristics, show multiple views, and include differences between similar trees.

As far as specific guides go, your choice should be based on your background knowledge, experience, and of course personal preference. If you did birds and were strongly inclined towards a particular guide, you might want to stick with the same author/publisher for trees. I'm quite used to the Sibley guide format and organization, so I'd have a tougher time learning to use a different guide. If you're just looking for a quick way to memorize the leaves without getting into details like venation, compound leaves, alternate vs opposite, etc, I'd definitely go with the Audubon or Peterson guides. NWF is quite compact, so it's good if you plan to go hiking to ID trees. The Sibley guide has a lot of good reading material in the introduction and has interesting details about each family, IDK if the other guides have this or not. I'd also stay away from guides that don't organize the trees by family, because it'll get quite confusing once you've got the ID down and want to study taxonomy.

Final thing I'll say: go to a bookstore and flip through the guides yourself to get an idea of what fits your style.