About the Author

Lyman Benson has devoted his professional life to teaching and to research on the plant life of the southwestern deserts and of North America north of Mexico. As Emeritus Professor and Chairman of the Department of Botany and Director of the Herbarium of Pomona College, he has to his credit more than seventy published works on the flora of North America and especially of the Southwest. Among his books are Trees and Shrubs of the Southwestern Deserts, with Robert A. Darrow (University of Arizona Press), Plant Taxonomy: Methods and Principles, and The Native Cacti of California.