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Volume I of Woody Plants of the Amazon contains 233 colour photos, 405 colour illustrations and 2655 b/w illustrations and focuses on the fruits of all known Guianan plants covering about one-hundred families, 546 genera, and over 2,000 species.
The fruits of a few important edible-fruit producing families that occur in the larger Amazon and not in the Guianas are included, such as Anacardiaceae, Annonaceae, Lecythidaceae, Myristicaceae, and Sapotaceae.
Furthermore, besides the fruits of all Amazonian trees of the families Lecythidaceae and Myristicaceae, all fresh fruits that have been cultivated for food and/or spread across the Amazon over the past 11,000 years by now extinct Neolithic Amerindian hunter-gatherers and/or terra preta anthrosol farming nations, are depicted in colour (Courtesy aquarelle artist Mrs. Lambertha Blijenberg).
The fruit catalogue is restricted to woody plants, i.e. trees and shrubs reaching over 1 m in height when full grown, lianas, vines, (hemi)-epiphytic climbing shrubs, and (sub)-ligneous epiphytes. Among the Chlamydospermae, only the family Gnetaceae is treated. The remaining 98 families belong to the Angiospermae. Among the Monocotyledoneae, the families Araceae, Musaceae/Strelitziaceae, Liliaceae, and Arecaceae (Palmae) are included. The remaining 94 families belong to the Dicotyledoneae.
