Adirondack Upland Flora: An Ecological Perspective

Linnaeus, in his 1737 _Glory of the Scientist_ exclaimed: "Good God! when I consider the melancholy fate of so many of (botany's) votaries I am tempted to ask whether men are in their right minds who so desperately risk life and everything else through their love of collecting plants."When I think of Dr. Michael Kudish, I'm reminded of those daring, stalwart, almost lunatic eighteenth and nineteenth century plant hunters Linnaeus refers to, whose passion and zeal led them to marvelous discoveries in the plant kingdom which contributed monumentally to the sciences of botany and horticulture. Possessed of the vitality and gusto of a Philibert Commerson, and the determination and singlemindedness of a David Douglas, Michael Kudish, had providence placed him squarely in the Age of Reason, would surely have rivaled the great plant hunters of the age. Alas, Dr. Kudish was born into a modern, tamer era, but his contribution to the science of botany, if not heroic, is nonetheless estimable, as his Adirondack Upland Flora adduces.Three attributes of Kudish's work stand out as testaments of an eminently successful flora. The first, perhaps most important, is its accessibility to the layperson. It is written with concision and clarity, with a de-emphasis on jargon. Maps and tables aplenty, and a sprinkling of full-page color photos serve to break up the densely informative text. Years of lecturing to fidgety and blurry-eyed college freshmen has enabled Dr. Kudish to convert the most arcane subject matter into the simplest terms to even the most recalcitrant of students. His frowzy attire and dotty manner seem to elicit a strange fascination from students, as it might when one observes an organ grinder and monkey that suddenly appeared on one's street corner. I always wondered if it was by chance, or by calculation, that the narrow end of Professor Kudish's necktie invariably hung lower that the wide end. The second attribute, appealing especially to students of natural history and ecology, is Kudish's in-depth discussion of the the determinants of the plant composition of the Adirondack flora: soils and climate. Rarely does the consulter of a  flora get such enlightening background information as Adirondack Upland Flora provides, as most floras focus singularly on describing plants in a particular region, without providing much context of the plant's surroundings. Kudish's "ecological perspective" is truly an ecological perspective, not a political diatribe on how "humankind is destroying the planet."Adirondack Upland Flora's third attribute is, forsooth, its usefulness to the botanist. Chapter five, the meat of the Flora, is a compendium of what must have been thousands of pages of meticulous field notes the indefatigable Kudish has compiled over his years of ambling the Adirondacks. Anyone with at least a modicum of interest in botany will marvel at the depth with which he documents the distribution of a particular plant. Along with detailed data on s