Review

This new hard-cover Flora of Barbados is in every respect a fine specimen of a local tropical flora. The black and white frontispiece is by Priscilla Fawcett, representing the ‘Barbados Pride’ (Caesalpinia pulcherrima). Concise in design, limited in consequence of the small space of the area concerned, hence restricted to a rather small number of species slightly over 600, this book dealing with Spermatophytes is of great value, supplying a long-felt need for a modern flora ‘by students, teachers, agriculturists, as well as by amateur botanists, whether residents or only visitors to the island’. It does not pretend to be more than it aims at: ‘to enable anybody with only a slight knowledge of botany to identify any wild Flowering plant he or she may come across’. Though devoted to the island of Barbados, the present work is surely of great importance for the recognition of the floristic composition of the numerous islets of the West Indies, most of them being small, with a flora to some extent agreeing with that of Barbados.