Finally, after months of nagging from my Botany Crew, I have found a way to publish the cribs at minimal cost.
Here's what they used to look like:
... quite literally a pack of cards, hand-written initially, then transferred to the pc, printed out and stuck to the card. It works beautifully: I can annotate them, then update the printed version.
However, three weeks ago I was introduced to the wonders of the Kindle, and now the cribs are being published electronically: here's number 34 (boy, have I been busy!) and to find it, you just go to Amazon's Kindle eBook page and type in "field guide hellebore" and there it is: once you have found one, just click on the author's name to see all the ones currently available.
They are not all available yet: it takes a while to get each one uploaded, and every time I revise anything they come off the "live" list, but I'm working my way through them whenever I get time.
They are currently priced at £1.99 each, which is the minimum price I can set, but to get round this, I
have devised a cunning plan: each month, for the first
weekend of the month, there will be Field Guides offered for free
download.
Amazon restrict me as
to how many "free" days each book is allowed to have, but I'll try to
rotate the titles on offer, so you have a good chance of getting
whichever ones you want, for free.
Please bear in mind these are for Beginners, and Improvers. They only
cover commonly found species, and they cannot replace a proper Field
Guide such as Poland or Rose: they are intended to be an easy-access,
non-off-putting way to present the salient information in an
easy-to-read format, to people who have gone beyond having to key out
every single plant, and who are trying to learn the difference between
species.
In fact, they are for people who have gone beyond "It's a Willowherb!" and have reached "But which one?"
This is where these
little Field Guides come in: once you are confident enough to recognise
that it's a (for example) Willowherb, you can save time wading through the in-depth
botanical descriptions in Rose, Poland, Stace etc, and merely take a quick look at the Field
Guide on your Kindle, which has all the salient information neatly laid out in a grid,
so you can quickly and easily check which characteristics your plant
has.
It drives me mad, the way that none of the guides present the information in the same order, even on the same page of their book: and frequently I have had to have three or four reference books open at the same time, as well as extensive internet research, in order to round up all the information required.
And if you don't have a Kindle? Apparently, that doesn't matter, you can download them to your PC, or to other devices, with the help of a simple "app" (or "programme" as we grown-ups say) which Amazon kindly give away for free. Also, if you are a member of Kindle Prime (or some such name) then you can download for free, and I rather think there is another layer of Kindle reading whereby you can "borrow" an eBook for a short time: I think that's a subscription thing, but if you have it, you'll already know about it.
So there you are, the Cribs are/will soon be available, this coming weekend 7/8th Feb will have two books for FREE, Hellebores and Tilia (Limes): do please check them out, use them, annotate them (Kindles are brilliant, you can make notes on your eBooks!) make them your own.
If you spot any mistakes, do let me know: and if you have any feedback or criticism, I'd be pleased to hear it.
