Bookstore

This is your complete guide for identifying and organically controlling all of the most common Texas insects. Drawing on years of practical experience and research, organic gardening experts Howard Garrett and Malcolm Beck give detailed instructions on how to identify, understand the life cycle of, and control or protect Texas insects, mites, snails, slugs, nematodes, and other critters. They also include striking color photos and black-and-white drawings to help you identify each bug. Garrett and Beck highlight the many useful roles that bugs play in nature and offer proven organic remedies for infestations of pest insects.

In Texas Cacti, authors Brian and Shirley Loflin present a concise, fully illustrated field guide to more than one hundred of the cacti most often found in Texas and the surrounding region.

The book opens with an illustrated introduction to cactus habitat and anatomy. The species are then organized by stem shape, with each account featuring detailed color photographs, specific identifying features (including spines, flowers, fruits, and seeds) and information about common and scientific names, habitat, flowering season, and more.

The photographs, range maps, and icons designating shape, conservation status, and blooming period, along with easy-to-understand descriptions, make this book a quick and friendly guide to cactus identification for botanists, amateur naturalists, and cactus enthusiasts alike.

Full of in-depth information and gardening tips, this resource contains the latest information on organic gardening and native plants, as well as region-specific tips for each type of plant in the garden and creative suggestions for hardscaping. Each chapter in this sourcebook is devoted to one of Texas’s twelve gardening regions, describing each region’s climate and soil type, and is interspersed throughout with money-saving tips and professional landscaping advice on plant selection and garden maintenance. Containing all the information needed to create and maintain a healthy and beautiful Texas garden, this handbook is a great reference for any avid gardener.

This colorful, easy-to-follow book will surprise and delight uninitiated nature enthusiasts while also supplying the experienced mushroom hunter with expert identification information. Excellent color photographs and precise descriptions of over 200 species will enable the mushroom hunter—even the amateur—to make quick, careful, easy distinctions between the edible varieties and the potentially toxic ones. In addition, kitchen-tested recipes are included, along with charts giving spore sizes and a list of recommended further reading.

Book describes and illustrates the 140 grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees that are economically important.

At last, an authoritative guide that is also readable; one that shows the trees’ relation to human and animal life — even in the charming illustrations. Includes leaf-shape guide, range maps, and an index of popular and scientific names for over 120 trees, both native and naturalized.

This is a book that provides detailed information about the wildflowers of Texas. The book contains a personal touch in the many notes the Loughmillers included about the plants they described and photographed . The book is an authoritative field guide that groups flowers by color and then by size for ease of use. It covers 1,505 species of wildflowers and has more than 1,500 illustrations with descriptions facing them . The book is a great resource for anyone interested in learning about the wildflowers of Texas.

Texas Parks & Wildlife’s Texas Wildscapes™ program is not currently active, but this detailed book continues to provide the tools you need whether your aim is wildlife habitat on an apartment balcony or a multi-acre ranch.

This book provides an engaging introduction to the roughly 4,000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field.

The book features more than 900 stunning color photos of the bees living all around us―in our gardens and parks, along nature trails, and in the wild spaces between. It describes their natural history, including where they live, how they gather food, their role as pollinators, and even how to attract them to your own backyard. Ideal for amateur naturalists and experts alike, it gives detailed accounts of every bee family and genus in North America, describing key identification features, distributions, diets, nesting habits, and more.

This fascinating, go-to text about the plants that make our drinks is the ideal gift book for every cocktail aficionado, the perfect drinks book for every plant-lover.

In The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries.

Of all the extraordinary and obscure plants that have been fermented and distilled, a few are dangerous, some are downright bizarre, and one is as ancient as dinosaurs—but each represents a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions and our history.

This charming concoction of biology, chemistry, history, etymology, and mixology—with delightful drawings, tasty cocktail recipes, and fun factoids throughout—will make you the most popular guest at any cocktail party.

Ferns and lycophytes have neither seeds nor flowers. With a surprising 127 native species, why Texas has more than almost any state in the continental US.

This book is a call to arms for gardeners who are searching for a better way to plant, maintain, and enjoy their gardens. The authors argue that traditional landscaping practices are harmful to the environment and unsustainable in the long run. They advocate for a new approach to gardening that works with nature, not against it.

The book provides practical advice on how to create a low-maintenance, sustainable garden that is both beautiful and beneficial to the environment. It includes in-depth profiles of native plants that are well-suited to different regions of the United States, as well as tips on how to design a garden that is both aesthetically pleasing and ecologically sound.

This book provides practical information about designing a home garden that is both beautiful and biodiverse. It offers strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape that provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife.

The book is richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work. It includes in-depth profiles of more than fifty butterflies, descriptions of the food plants for a variety of both caterpillars and butterflies, and plant lists for easy selection and substitution, depending on where you live and what is available. For those who want specific advice on what to plant where, the authors have designed useful, adaptable landscape plans and extensive planting options for each of seven state regions.

Written for today’s water-conscious gardener, this book provides cutting-edge information on how to grow more than 270 colorful, unthirsty flowering perennials, shrubs, and ornamental grasses adapted to dry-climate regions. The book was especially prepared for gardeners in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. It provides proper planting dates and recommended plants and growing techniques for each area, and shows how to prepare soils, make compost, and get the most out of water.

Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to Mexico. Their incredible journey—nearly 3,000 miles long—takes them through Oklahoma, Texas, and other US states, where butterfly devotees eagerly await their arrival. The monarch migration is a brilliant demonstration of nature’s ingenuity, but the delicate creatures face many perils, and the number of migrating monarchs is declining sharply. This compelling book weaves natural history, science, and personal experience to explore the rise and fall of one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena.

While monarch butterflies have been migrating for centuries, they seized public attention in 1976 when a National Geographic magazine cover story featured the “discovery” of their roosting sites in Mexico. The article rocked the world of lepidoptery, solved a scientific mystery, and opened the door to human meddling. The new revelations put a spotlight on the insects, and inspired the creation of butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico as well as myriad efforts to protect them. Almost 40 years later, many believe that monarch butterflies are in danger of extinction. How real is that danger?

Journalist and butterfly advocate Monika Maeckle addresses this question and more as she delves into the rich history and current plight of the monarch butterfly. Through meticulous reporting, Maeckle offers unique insights on the butterflies as well as a nuanced portrait of the shifting and sometimes contentious community of scientists, enthusiasts, and “flutterati” who have emerged to support the monarchs’ cause.

A highly engaging book, The Monarch Butterfly Migration also focuses a wider lens on the effects of climate change and the tensions between advocacy and scientific accuracy. In addition to calling for environmental sustainability, this book reminds each of us to notice—and never take for granted—the natural wonders in our own backyards.

From two veteran ecologists comes a new and sweeping exploration of the natural history of Texas in all its biological diversity and geological variation. Few states, if any, can match Texas for its myriad species, past and present, and its many distinctive landscapes, from prairie grasslands and hardwood forests to coastal lagoons and desert mountains.

The book is about the importance of oak trees in North American forests and how they support the majority of insect, animal, and bird life, keep the water clean and the soil moist, and foster a diversity of life more so than any other species of tree. The book reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. It also provides practical advice about how to plant and care for an oak, along with information about the best oak species for your area. The book will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them.

This book uses a modern phylogenetic framework to shed new light on the life histories and evolution of solitary bees. It explains the foraging behavior of solitary bees, their development, and competitive mating tactics. The book describes how they construct complex nests using an amazing variety of substrates and materials, and how solitary bees have co-opted beneficial mites, nematodes, and fungi to provide safe environments for their brood. It looks at how they have evolved intimate partnerships with flowering plants and examines their associations with predators, parasites, microbes, and other bees. This up-to-date synthesis of solitary bee biology is an essential resource for students and researchers, one that paves the way for future scholarship on the subject.

Written by those whose primary work is actually the making of prairies, this book provides a detailed account of what has been learned about the art and science of prairie restoration. Includes guidance on all aspects of the restoration process, from concept to execution to monitoring, as well as hard-to-find data on plants and animals of the prairies, seed collection, propagation, and resources for seeds and equipment.

Drought, floods, hail, winds, and extreme heat and cold are just a few of the challenges that unpredictable weather can present as you’re trying to grow healthy plants. Charles W. G. Smith helps you tackle unforeseen weather changes using his ingenious defensive approach to gardening. With profiles of 100 hardy plants and expert information on dealing with problems as they arise, Smith shows you exactly how to plan and maintain a gorgeous, durable garden that will stand up to whatever nature throws at it.

Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer is known as the “father of Texas botany”. This is the first English translation of a collection of his essays originally published in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, providing valuable insight into the cultural and natural history of Texas.

A comprehensive and compact field guide, Trees of Central Texas introduces 186 species of tree life in Central Texas, an area roughly the region of the Edwards Plateau and bordered by the Balcones Escarpment on the south and east, the Pecos River on the west, and the Texas Plains and the Llano Uplift on the north. From the hardy oaks and rugged mesquites to the graceful willows, cottonwoods, and pecans, the tree life of Central Texas varies as much as the vast and changing land that hosts it. Full descriptions and superb illustrations of all the native and naturalized trees of the region as well as fascinating bits of history and lore make this an essential guide to the wealth of tree life in Central Texas.