Les Fougères et plantes alliées des Antilles françaises

A richly illustrated book, a valuable tool for the knowledge and conservation of the natural heritage of the Antilles

Since the publication of Jacques Fournet’s Flora of the Antilles in 2002, and Jean-François Bernard’s “Discovering the Ferns of the Antilles” in 2011, no new publication has been devoted to this exceptionally rich group. The Lesser Antilles boast 323 taxa, 14% of which are endemic; the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique alone are home to 84% of the species known in the Lesser Antilles.

The islands of the Lesser Antilles form an archipelago conducive to the development of rich floral biodiversity , due to their geological origin, their topography, and their varying degrees of insularity. This diversity is also found among the pteridophytes, which have widely colonized all Antillean ecosystems, from mangroves to the summits of volcanoes.

Les Fougères et plantes alliées des Antilles françaises presents this rich plant heritage, offering the reader the opportunity to discover each of these species, with botanical descriptions, information on their ecology and the habitats where they develop, and finally an iconography that presents both the plants in their environment and the most minute anatomical characteristics and details.

With its identification tools — family keys, genera keys, and species keys — this guide will be invaluable to both amateur and professional botanists, making it easier for them to name the species encountered during excursions on the islands. As such, this work will be greatly appreciated by those involved in the conservation of the Caribbean’s natural heritage, as well as by all plant and garden enthusiasts who will be able to appreciate the diversity of forms of these wild plants.

• Complete information on each known species of ferns and related plants of the French West Indies islands, presented as a monograph (botanical description and possible confusions, distribution, rarity, conservation status);
• Keys for the identification of families, genera and species;
• More than 1600 photographs show the species in their environment, and illustrate many very useful botanical criteria for their identification.

French Language