Overview

The flower hunters were intrepid explorers - remarkable, eccentric men and women who scoured the world in search of extraordinary plants from the middle of the seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century, and helped establish the new science of botany. For these adventurers, the search for new, undiscovered plant specimens was something worth risking - and often losing - their lives for. From the Douglas-fir and the monkey puzzle tree, to exotic orchids and azaleas, many of the plants that are now so familiar to us were found in distant regions of the globe, often in wild and unexplored country, in impenetrable jungle, and in the face of hunger, disease, and hostile locals. It was specimens like these, smuggled home by the flower hunters, that helped build the great botanical collections, and lay the foundations for the revolution in our understanding of the natural world that was to follow. Here, the adventures of eleven such explorers are brought to life, describing not only their extraordinary daring and dedication, but also the lasting impact of their discoveries both on science, and on the landscapes and gardens that we see today.

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9780199561827

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Reviews

The assiduous Gribbins have uncovered much splendid detail in this bouquet of 11 floral explorers. Christopher Hirst The Independent

Author Information

John and Mary Gribbin are popular science writers who have collaborated on many books, including Richard Feynman: A Life in Science, Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity, and Big Numbers: A Mind Expanding Trip to Infinity and Back. They live in East Sussex, in the UK. Books by the same authors: Fitzroy: The Remarkable Story of Darwin's Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast, 2004 Ice Age: How a change of climate made us human, 2003 The Universe: a Biography, 2007

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