Peterson's vs Audubon Western Trees

C

Clang!

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I'm looking for a tree and large flora reference for California and the surrounding states. The two that keep being recommended are Peterson's and the Audubon Society guide. I've used Peterson's and found the organization to be excellent, but the pictures could use some work. I haven't used the Audubon Society guide. From the Amazon preview, it looks like there's excellent photos, but I can't find any information on organization.

How do they compare?

A Field Guide to Western Trees (Peterson Field Guides: 44)
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-W...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288384623&sr=1-1

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees--W: Western Region
http://www.amazon.com/National-Audu...=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288384805&sr=1-7
 
Personally Ive always went with the Petersons
The ID pictures have been painted .Apparently the painter takes an average of what the specimen looks like,whereas in the Audubon its a photo and only one.
In life a tree,bird butterfly of the same kind can have some local or regional difference from one somewhere else and may not look like the picture in the book,although most times its spot on or near enough to make an ID but not always.
Anyway thats my reasoning for using the Peterson guides
Dan'l
 
Peterson - Audubon has nice pictures, but the drawings in Peterson's capture the normal shape, leaf, bird, etc., much better.
 
I prefer the Audubon book. I'm an amateur dendrologist, and it seems to work better for me.
 
I ended up ordering three field guides to play with:

Peterson's Field Guide to Western Trees (George A. Petrides) for tree identification

Introduction to California Chaparral (Ronald D. Quinn) for everything else since the dominant ecosystem here is chaparral. The only thing I can identify right now is manzanita.

Scats and Tracks of North America (James Halfpenny) since I'e already got a reference of the local fauna prints, but not much information on gaits, browse, dens, etc.
 
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