This is the most creative work on ethnobotany and economic botany I know. It is easy reading, well illustrated, and packed with an amazing and rich array of information. There is no precedent for Florida Ethnobotany.

Among the treasure troves of information are detailed etymologies of generic and specific scientific and nonscientific names. We are treated to wide-ranging listings and explanations including those of names and uses in the Caribbean and Latin America as well as places as distant as Europe, India, Africa, and the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Austin has even included Native American names and their etymologies from as far away as northwestern Mexico.

There are 53 pages of introduction with explanations and extensive summary tables. I like the user-friendly innovation in the lengthy tables of a line drawn across the whole page to separate each entry. The literature cited spans 64 double-column pages, and the index covers 102 triple-column pages. The bulk of the book is an economic and ethnobotanical flora arranged alphabetically by genus and species. The species accounts treat 813 Florida species with documented uses. There are more than 500 line drawings, many of them original, and 16 pages of color plates, four species to the page.