Field Guide to Field Guides: Trees & Forest

Front

Find your Guide

If you are…	In the Field	At Home
On the Trail	Mac's NW Trees Craig MacGowan Laminated, waterproof, our #1 tree seller	Northwest Trees Arno & Hammerly Species accounts you'll actually read
In the Yard	NW Know-How: Trees Karen Gaudette Brewer Practical, friendly, regional	The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben The book that changed how we see forests
PNW Conifers	Pacific Coast Tree Finder Tom Watts The pocket dichotomous key	Douglas Fir Stephen Arno The tree that built the Northwest
Getting Started	Field Guide to Trees of the PNW Philippa Hudson Photographic, compact, affordable	Finding the Mother Tree Suzanne Simard How trees talk to each other underground

If You Can Only Pick One

★ Staff Pick

Northwest Trees: Identifying and Understanding the Region's Native Trees · Arno & Hammerly

Arno & Hammerly's classic does what no other guide manages: it identifies every native tree in the region and tells you why each one matters. Species accounts that read like natural history essays. The book you take to the trailhead and then can't put down when you get home.

First-Timer Pack

Mac's NW Trees+Northwest Know-How: Trees

One for the trail, one for the kitchen table. You'll be naming trees by the weekend.

Nature Reader Pack

The Hidden Life of Trees+The Golden Spruce

How forests think, and the true story of a sacred tree and the man who destroyed it. You'll never walk through woods the same way.

Back

More Field Guides

Sibley Guide to Trees
Sibley · The gold-standard national tree guide

Sibley Trees of Pacific NW
FoldingSibley · His plates, for exactly our trees

Trees of Western North America
Spellenberg · Comprehensive, packed with info

Trees & Shrubs of the PNW
PhotosTurner · All woody-plants reference

Native Trees of Western WA
PhotosZobrist · Washington-specific

Trees to Know in OR & WA
PhotosJensen · OSU Extension classic

Street Trees of Seattle
Ebrahimi · The city's trees, one walk at a time

Knowing the Trees
Keffer · Seed to snag lifecycle guide

Trees of the West
Hashimoto · An artist's guide to western trees

Beyond the Field Guide

Forest Ecology & Science

The Hidden Life of Trees
Wohlleben — The gateway book. Forest communication.

Finding the Mother Tree
Simard — The scientist who proved trees talk.

The Forest Unseen
Haskell — A year on one square meter. Pulitzer finalist.

American Canopy
Rutkow — How forests built America. Science meets national history.

Dead Wood: Afterlife of Trees
Wohl — What happens after the tree falls.

Walking the Woods

How to Read a Tree
Gooley — Shape, lean, bark, moss — what trees are telling you.

Trees in My Forest
Heinrich — Patient, obsessive, brilliant observation.

Witness Tree
Mapes — A year with one tree, tracking climate change.

Forest Walking
Wohlleben — A practical companion for walks in the woods.

How to Love a Forest
Tapper — Tending a changing forest with love and a chainsaw.

Northwest Timber History

The Final Forest
Dietrich — Forks, spotted owls, and the fight that defined us.

Timber: Toil and Trouble
Andrews — Loggers' own stories. The bestseller of this shelf.

Making of the NW Forest Plan
Johnson — The policy that shaped these forests.

Logging in Grays Harbor
Woodwick — Local industry history in photographs.

Deep River
Marlantes — Finnish loggers in southwest WA. Reads like Steinbeck.

Tree Lit & Philosophy

The Golden Spruce
Vaillant — Our all-time #1. A sacred tree and a madman's chainsaw.

The Overstory
Powers — Pulitzer-winning novel. Trees as characters.

Wild Trees
Preston — Redwood canopy as unexplored frontier.

In Trees
Moor — What trees have taught the humans among them.

Tree
Fowles — Fierce, brief meditation on wildness and naming.

The Man Who Planted Trees
Giono — The reforestation fable. Slim and perfect.

The Olympic Peninsula Shelf

Trees Are Speaking
Mapes — Salmon forests, forest policy, the Elwha. Local and urgent.

Salmon, Cedar, Rock & Rain
McNulty — The essential Olympic Peninsula natural history.

Cedar: Tree of Life
Stewart — The tree at the center of Northwest Coast cultures.

Canopy of Titans
Koberstein — The global importance of the Pacific coastal rainforest.

For Young & New Readers

Northwest Know-How: Trees
Brewer — Friendly, illustrated, no jargon. The place to start.

Knowing the Trees
Keffer — Seed to snag. How a forest works.

Trees: An Illustrated Field Guide
Varshaneh — Small, illustrated, for visual learners of any age.

These are the ones we reach for most often — the shelf keeps going. Ethnobotany, fire ecology, that book about the German forester — just ask. That's what we're here for.

A Field Guide to Field Guides · No. 4

Built by Steven Pate for Port Book and News · rev. 2026-08-31