Chilean plant books
Jane McGary (Sun, 21 Dec 2003 11:08:52 PST)

SInce there has been some comment in response to my mentioning the
difficulty of buying plant books from South America, specifically Chile
(home of so many wonderful bulbs), I thought I should provide the citations
of the books I have here to make it easier for people to search for them on
the Internet.

The _Alpine Garden Society Encyclopaedia of Alpines_, ed. by Kenneth
Beckett, AGS Publications Ltd. 1993, ISBN 0-900048-63-8, is as far as I
know available only from the AGS Bookstore (see the AGS website), and it
now costs over $400 US for the two volumes of about 700 pages each. It's
probably getting a little outdated by now but I use it almost every day,
since I edit the NARGS journal. The bulb entries are mostly excellent, and
as I mentioned, this is the only place to find compendious information on
southern Andean plants in English.

The series of field guides I mentioned is published by Fundacion Claudio
Gay de Empresa El Mercurio S.A.P., Av. Santa Maria No. 5542, Santiago,
Chile. I have only two volumes here, but there are at least two others. The
ones I have are:
Plantas altoandinas en la flora silvestre de Chile, by A. Hoffmann, F.
Liberona, M. Munoz, y J. Watson. 1998. ISBN 956-7743-00-2.
Flora silvestre de Chile, zona central, by Adriana Hoffmann. 3rd edition,
1995. 4th ed., 1998. ISBN 956-7743-03-7.

A book for the bulb-rich northern part of Chile is:
Flores del desierto de Chile/Wildflowers of the Chilean desert, by S.
Teillier Arredondo and H. A. Zepeda FLores. 1998. Published by Marisa Cuneo
Ediciones, Casilla 276, Valdivia, Chile. ISBN 956-7173-22-2. The
interesting introduction appears in both Spanish and English.

All these Chilean publications are paperbacks with color illustrations
throughout (photos in the Flores del desierto, watercolored drawings in the
Hoffmann series).

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA