Hillier Manual of Trees & Shrubs (ISBN 0715310739)

Not for the weekend gardener:
I believe this book would only be of interest to selected people. Those would be people who want to know that, for example "pumila L. A small to large shrub of upright habit with downy youg shoots and point, coarsely toothed leaves. E North America. I 1762." To be fair, there are probably botantist and perhaps nusary people who would recognise the value in this type of manual. My point is that to the layman this is of limited value. The one thing I did learn is to never buy a book with out at least seeing a table of contents. The main contents of this manual are the short descriptions, of which I provided an example.