Desert Tree Finder: Identifying Trees and Tree-Like Cacti of the Desert Southwest

Identify trees and tree-like cacti in the southwestern United States with this pocket-size guide.

You can appreciate and enjoy beautiful trees of the desert and dry desert hills, as well as some trees commonly grown in human-made oases! If you're curious about the trees and tree-like cacti that you see, then Desert Tree Finder by May Theilgaard Watts is just what you need. With the handy, easy-to-use booklet, you can identify trees throughout the Chihuahuan, Mohave, Sonoran, and southern Great Basin deserts of the United States and along the northern border of Mexico.

The book provides a dichotomous key to identifying desert trees. Simply answer a series of simple questions about the location, appearance, branches, leaves, and more. Along the way, professional illustrations by Tom Watts help to guide you to a positive identification.

Book Features:

• Step-by-step guide to desert tree identification


• More than 70 species of trees and tree-like cacti


• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification


• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack

This guide is applicable to desert areas within the southwestern US states of Arizona, California, Nevada, and New Mexico.

May Theilgaard Watts was an esteemed naturalist and celebrated ecologist, as well as a writer, poet, illustrator, and educator. She served as a naturalist at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. She taught natural history classes and shared the stories written on the land by wind, rain, and fire; by animals and plants; by time; and by history. In 1963, she was credited with proposing a plan that would ultimately become the national rails-to-trails program. She was the author of such books as Reading the Landscape of America, Flower Finder, and Tree Finder, which has exceeded 150,000 copies sold. May passed away in 1975.

Tom Watts was an author and an illustrator. He and his family are credited with creating the Nature Study Guides series of field guides. The concept began with Tom's mother, May Theilgaard Watts, a naturalist in Berkeley, California, who created student handouts in the 1930s. Those handouts evolved into pocket guides, and some 30 years later, Tom turned them into a business venture. The publishing company known as the Nature Study Guild was born. Tom contributed text and illustrations to several of the guides, including Flower Finder and Tree Finder. Tom passed away in 1992, but his book series remains popular, helping hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and Canada learn about and connect with nature.