A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
In a world flooded with images designed to create memories, validate perceptions, and influence others, botanical illustration is about something much more focused: creating technically accurate depictions of plants. Reproductions of centuries-old botanical illustrations frequently adorn greeting cards, pottery, and advertising, to promote heritage or generate income, yet their art is scientific: intended to record, display, and transmit scientific data. The Beauty of the Flower tells the backstory of these images, showing us how scientific botanical illustrations are collaborations among artists, scientists, and publishers. It explores the evolution and interchanges of these illustrations since the mid-fifteenth century, how they have been used to communicate scientific ideas about plants, and how views of botanical imagery change. Featuring unique images rarely seen outside of specialist literature, this book reveals the fascinating stories behind these remarkable illustrations.
Combining biology, sociology, and cultural history, Grasses explores how these staple crops bear the mark of human influence more visibly than any other plant and how we, in turn, are motivated to protect green space such as public parks. Harris describes this symbiotic connection against the background of climate change, contending that humans must find a way to balance their need for grass as food, as living space, and potentially even as fuel. Providing an impressive exploration of the profound impact these plants have on our survival and our pleasure, this well-illustrated book is a must have for gardeners, foodies, and environmentalists.
The publishing of the Flora Graeca was a landmark event in 1830. Only 25 copies were published, due to the book’s size of 10 double folio volumes and its numerous illustrations, and it cost over £620, a colossal sum at the time. The Flora Graeca brought together beautiful renderings of the fruits of the travels of British scientist John Sibthorp, who made multiple trips to the eastern Mediterranean in the early nineteenth century to collect a rich array of exotic floral specimens. Now The Magnificent Flora Graeca chronicles Sibthorp’s immense undertaking, including brilliant selections from his groundbreaking volume.
The story of the expeditions of Sibthorp and his renowned illustrator Ferdinand Bauer is a tale replete with larger-than-life characters and adventures on land and sea. Harris profiles the lives of Sibthorp, Bauer, and other leading characters, and explores the Flora Graeca’s rich cultural and scientific legacy. Sibthorp’s pioneering adventures unearthed floral specimens previously unknown to science, as he collected the originals of such popular garden flowers as the Crocus flavus ssp. flavus, the parent of the Golden Yellow; and Cyprus’s Cyclamen persicum, the parent of the widely grown garden cyclamens species.
This new volume, drawn from photographs of Sibthorp’s remarkably well-preserved specimens and luminous reproductions of the original watercolors and engravings by Bauer, features more images from the Flora Graeca than have ever been published since its first printing.
A fascinating treasure of floral wonders, The Magnificent Flora Graeca is an essential addition to the bookshelf for the plant lover or anyone curious about the natural history behind their beloved garden retreats.
This book tells the story of the garden through accounts of each of its keepers, tracing their work and priorities, from its founding keeper, Jacob Bobart, through to the early nineteenth-century partnership of gardener William Baxter and academic Charles Daubeny, who together gave the garden its greenhouse and ponds and helped ensure its survival to the present. Richly illustrated, this book offers a wonderful introduction to a celebrated Oxford site.
Beautifully illustrated, Planting Paradise charts the evolution of thinking about the cultivation of gardens from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In this age of discovery, when the world was being explored as never before, gardening itself took on new dimensions. The Renaissance belief in direct observation of nature offered an alternative way of thinking and inspired the scientific approach of the Enlightenment, and soon gardens were no longer just places of beauty, but also laboratories for scientific investigation.
Planting Paradise reveals how the botanic gardens of early modern Europe were largely viewed as a means of supplying surgeons with medicines but by the seventeenth and eighteenth century the interest in gardens and cultivating exotic plants had spread to all levels of society. As global exploration took Europeans all over the world, gardens became a tapestry of many diverse botanical histories—some plants were native, some were introduced from foreign lands, and others were bred in the garden. Planting Paradise shows how the garden became a symbol of human interactions within the botanical world.
A lovely gift book for garden lovers, Planting Paradise showcases the superb collection of botanical illustrations in the Plant Sciences Department and Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and presents a handsome and fascinating look at the history of the garden from the picturesque to the practical and back again.
Unraveling the interplay between human cultures and the biology of these spectacular blooms over the last six thousand years, Sunflowers explores our persistent fascination with this family and how our uses of the plants have changed over millennia. Found in almost all habitats, from the driest deserts and tallest mountains to grasslands and urban wastelands, the sunflower family includes more than 32,000 species. It produces hugely popular and economically valuable ornamental flowers, as well as familiar flavorings such as tarragon and artemesia, and its members are also used in the production of antimalarial drugs, artificial sweeteners, insecticide, and fish poisons. Illustrated with many rarely seen images of the sunflower family, this beautiful volume sheds surprising new light on these familiar, sunniest of flowers.
With What Have Plants Ever Done for Us?, Stephen Harris takes readers step by chronological step through the role of plants in the rise of the Western world, with sojourns through the history of trade, travel, politics, chemistry, and medicine. Plants are our most important food source. Some, such as barley, have been staples since the earliest times. Others, like the oil palm, are relative newcomers to the Western world. Over time, the ways we use some plants has also dramatically changed: Beets, a familiar sight on the dinner plate, were once thought to be an effective treatment for leprosy and now show significant promise as a sustainable biofuel. What, one wonders, might the future thus hold for the mandrake or woad? Plants have also held potent cures to some of our most prevalent diseases. An extract from the bark of the yew tree, for instance, is commonly used in the treatment of cancer.
Wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging, What Have Plants Ever Done for Us? will help readers cultivate a deeper appreciation for our branched and rooted friends who ask little in return for their vast contributions save for a little care and water.
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