Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2-27-1991
Citation
Great Plains Research 1:1 (February 1991), pp. 184–185. Copyright © 1991 The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Used by permission. http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/GPR/gpr.shtml
Abstract
All 2260 plant species of eastern-slope Colorado--from the continental divide east to the Nebraska and Kansas borders--can be identified using this book. That figure includes not only the native species but also the numerous introduced ones that survive without cultivation and often provide severe competition for the native flora. Much of Colorado's native plains flora was eliminated in the past century by plowing and by grazing livestock. It is largely replaced by a few durable native and many aggressive exotic species that thrive under those conditions, but remnants of the original flora exist on escarpments and in a few level places.
Comments
Editor's note, February 5, 2013: The author of this review (Dr. Kaul) writes that his "review of Colorado Flora (first edition, 1990) has been rendered obsolete by the publication of three succeeding editions of that book under the same title. My review of the first edition ... is very different from one I'd give the fourth."