Bomenboek voor Suriname

The aim of this book is to provide all persons interested in the tree and wood species of Suriname with a simple means to find the name of a given tree. To this end two dichotomous keys have been drawn up with the help of punched cards prepared from studies of conserved material and field observations made by the authors. The first one makes use only of vegetative characters of leaves and twigs and a few saliant features of the bark, disregarding flower and fruit characters mostly used in floras. The second key is based on the anatomy of the wood as far as this can be observed with a good 10 X or sometimes 20 X magnifying hand-lens. In the “Inleiding” the terminology applied in each of the keys and in the descriptions is explained and elucidated by sketch drawings. After the keys follows the descriptive part in which the families are treated in alphabetical sequence as are the genera within each family and species within a genus. In general the taxa are taken in the same circumscription as in the “Flora of Suriname”; where a different name is accepted, following recent views, the name in the Flora has been added in brackets. Attention is drawn to the Mimosaceae and Papilionaceae which are treated here on account of their close relationship as two major subdivisions of Leguminosae, the latter name being used as general family heading