Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska; was written and contributed to by ten notable authors, compiled and edited by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon, whose design was to present an accessible ecological guide to the plants of this specific region. It is a comprehensive guide that includes photos and descriptions of flora, organized in a manner that groups similar species for the purpose of identification. Information on human interactions with the flora is included with the plants’ ecological descriptions, the entire works is engaging and systematically accessible.
Funding for the publication of Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska was provided for by the British Columbia Ministry of Forests and the Canada-British Columbia Partnership Agreement on Forest Resource Development. The publisher, Lone Pine Publishing, acknowledged the assistance of Alberta Community Development and the Department of Canadian Heritage with additional funding provided by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
According to the Flow chart for discriminating among different sources of information, Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska begins to qualify as a research material because the majority of contributing authors are affiliated with departments of speciality within Canadian universities or the British Columbia Forest Service (p. 527). I did not find any in text citations, however, there is an extensive list of References Cited, as well, direct acknowledgement is given to “knowledgeable Aboriginal botanists from the First Nations of the Northwest Coast and neighbouring areas…” (Pojar and MacKinnon, p. 7). Beyond the editing of Pojar and MacKinnon, there was a technical review of portions of the text by George Douglas and Chris Marchant (p. 7). Because this compilation is not a scientific study and, therefore, does not include a “methods” or a “results” section, I believe Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska to officially be an academic peer-reviewed review material. The following pictures are meant to provide the documentation needed to support my designation of Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska as an academic peer-reviewed review material because they show the text claiming technical revision and reveal the qualifications of the authors. Unofficially, I have many years of pouring through the water resistant pages of Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon and Alaska, considering it and others in the series dedicated to the different ecoregions of British Columbia, to qualify as researched reference material.
