The Sunflower Family: A Guide to the Family Asteraceae in the Contiguous United States

Authors:
Richard Spellenberg and Naida Zucker

SBM: 52
ISSN: 0883-1475
ISBN-13: 978-1-889878-65-2

Publication Date: 31 July 2019
Copyright © 2019 Richard Spellenberg & Naida Zucker
Specifications: 6½"×9½" (flexbinding), 574 pp.,1765 color photos, mostly by authors.

About the Book

Developed for wildflower enthusiasts, students, land managers, teachers, and other non-professional botanists interested in plant diversity, this book is the only comprehensive identification guide to the Sunflower Family of the contiguous U.S. and southern Canada. Here, 1765 photos help identify 428 genera and nearly 700 species of sunflowers, daisies, asters, and their relatives found outside of cultivation. From lowly cudweeds to lively daisies and statuesque sunflowers (baffling to the beginner), the plants in this family are notoriously known as the DYCs (the darned yellow composites). Includes geographic ranges, habitats, genus descriptions, supplementary comments, with cross-referencing to similar genera. All in minimally technical language.

About the Authors

Richard Spellenberg and Naida Zucker, husband and wife, spent their professional careers in the Biology Department at New Mexico State University (N.M.S.U.) in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

 Richard received his Ph.D. degree in botany from the Botany Department at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1968. His doctoral research regarded the relationships and taxonomy of hotspring grasses in the Pacific Northwest. He began teaching and studying the taxonomy of western North American plants at N.M.S.U. that year, retiring in 2000.

 Naida received her Ph.D. in animal behavior from the Zoology Department at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois, in 1973. She did her research in Panama on mating systems in fiddler crabs, traveling later to Australia to continue her studies. She joined the faculty at New Mexico State University in 1973 and has taught general biology, zoology, invertebrate zoology, and animal behavior, in addition to several graduate courses.