African Wildlife & Environment Issue 85

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

drupes are soft fruits with ONE seed) yet these words are interchanged, thus losing accuracy. Why not simply stick to the generic word FRUIT!? Another is in attempting to satisfy amateurs, morphological structures are named incorrectly (the dangling ‘brooms’ on the Broom-cluster Fig Ficus sur are NOT roots but inflorescence branches! 5.Then many of the photographs in most, if not all, tree books do not always show the diagnostic features adequately , if at all, making most of the photographs useless! 6.Why in this day-and-age of modern photography authors cannot source THE BEST images is beyond me. In fact, I feel so strongly about this, and the woolly, wordy descriptions, that I published my views in Dendron #53 December 2021 pages 40-53 (anyone wanting a copy please e-mail me for one). 7.And finally, even though book authors are generally authorities in their field, I believe that publishers should have each and every field guide peer-reviewed. In almost every guide I have used I find small errors, and sometimes even rather major mistakes. In support of this the editor of the Afrikaans edition of my own What’s that Tree? – a starter’s guide to trees of southern Africa Struik Nature, 2011, found several errors that I had missed! So, roll on a second edition…

Prof Eugene Moll Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology

University of the Western Cape eugenemoll74@gmail.com

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