Hubbard’s work on grasses in its various forms and incarnations has dominated the British grasses scene for more than half a century. Although the keys worked well and it was nice to have the different special purpose keys, like the vegetative key for non-flowering grasses, the taxonomy has become very dated.

Now we have a completely new key. It uses a new approach for English botanists whereby identification starts with the key to tribes and progresses, sometimes via a key to subtribes, through keys to genera and finally to keys to species.

There follow the standard BSBI Handbook accounts with very useful and clear, line drawings on the righthand page, faced by text on the left, although this presents much more information than Hubbard and often fills more than one page so the layout is not as regular as in other Handbooks.