164 THE MICHIGAN BOTANIST Vol. 42 BOOK REVIEWS Riley, John L. 2003. FLORA OF THE HUDSON BAY LOWLAND AND ITS POSTGLACIAL ORIGINS. NRC Research Press, National Research Council of Canada, Building M-55, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0R6. Paperback; viii + 236 pp. ISBN 0-660-18941-0. US$49.95; also CAN$49.95, at their website, where no information on credit cards is given and the on-line order form is out of commission, but one can e-mail them at
[email protected] The Hudson Bay Lowland occupies 3.5% of all of Canada. It is one of the earth’s largest wetland landscapes, perhaps five times larger than the floodplain forests along the Amazon River. For the region, the author documents 816 natives vascular plant species and 98 non-native species. There are no keys and no descriptions, but the sources of the nomenclature are given in detail. In Appendix A, pages 101 through 175, there are distribution maps, which combine occurrence maps (dots) with range-limit maps (heavy black line). These range limits are difficult to interpret. For example, Fig. A63, Elymus vir- ginicus in eastern Canada, shows a range-limit line running roughly from New- foundland to Manitoba. (Since the range of the species is Newfoundland to Al- berta, south to Florida and Arizona, the line may be understood to extend indefinitely to the west.) I take the line to mean, “This species occurs generally south of this line.” But there are 8 dots (and one asterisk) north of the line, with some far outside the limits of the Hudson Bay Lowland.