There have been quite a few recent publications reviewing the cacti of Brazil in the last few years by these authors and by others. By and large this publication has managed to take a different perspective so that not too much duplication occurs. With few exceptions the photographs are not the same as in earlier publications. The publication takes the form of a state by state review of the occurance of columnar Brazilian cacti and compares and contrasts our state of knowledge compared with that of Werdermann in the 1930s. This brings out a number of factors quite clearly. In Werdermann's time certain areas were completely undeveloped, unexplored and unexploited. In the same areas today there are often cities, road networks and unfortunately considerable loss of habitat and species already, barely before (or perhaps even before) they have been discovered. The other factor I understand better from this publication is the wide distribution of some genera and species while others are known from only quite small areas. The Kaktusy publication contains some literature references but only those which were not included in Schumannia 3, so is intended to be used in conjuction with that publication. It also brings the Information in Schumannia up date to early 2003. One minor criticism is that I found it a little tricky associating the captions with the photographs. This has been done with positional letter codes which would have been fine except for the faint background map behind the letters which in places is rather confusing Available from Whitestone Gardens.

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