The Plant Hunters: Tales of the Botanist-Explorers Who Enriched Our Gardens (Horticulture Garden Classic) [Paperback]

Tyler Whittle (Author), Charles Elliott (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1997

Tales of the botanist explorers who enriched our gardens.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Slime pits, bribery, jaguars, murder...what would drive someone through such risks merely to find new plants? From Queen Hatshepsut's expedition to the land of Punt in 1482 B.C. in search of frankincense, to more recent botanical expeditions, here are the dramatic adventures of The Plant Hunters. We meet Pliny, Linnaeus, Sir Joseph Banks, Nathaniel Ward, and others and find out what they brought back and why. A fascinating collection for gardeners interested in how now-familiar plants arrived in their gardens, and for anyone with a thirst for adventure and scientific discover. (6 X 9, 296 pages)

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558215921
• ISBN-13: 978-1558215924
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,236,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fast paced overview of horticultural collecting, May 23, 2000

By 

Edward Alexander Gerster "miamibooks" (South Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Plant Hunters: Tales of the Botanist-Explorers Who Enriched Our Gardens (Horticulture Garden Classic) (Paperback)

In the wake of reading ORCHID FEVER, I looked for other books that dealt with the plant hunters -- particularly of the 19th century. What I found was this wonderful book that is even broader in scope, providing a fast paced review of highlights in mankind's never ending task of collecting, naming and growing plants. The author does not try to present only sensationalized material, and doesn't try to be "complete," but instead gives a wonderful and highly readable overview of the field. Highly recommended.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The triumphs and disasters in plant hunting, September 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Plant Hunters: Tales of the Botanist-Explorers Who Enriched Our Gardens (Horticulture Garden Classic) (Paperback)

This exciting and in depth book contains excellent information on the many exploits of plant hunters around the world. It recites tales of both failures and successes. The author has a talent for weaving these incredible tales into stories you won't soon forget.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Half hardy and semiclassical, July 17, 2008

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Plant Hunters: Tales of the Botanist-Explorers Who Enriched Our Gardens (Horticulture Garden Classic) (Paperback)

"The Plant Hunters" gives every sign of having been thrown together by Tyler Whittle to boil a pot. Yet he was an enthusiast for his subject, so there are many signs of a good book trying to get out.

Nevertheless, is it more than irritating, in a book about hunting plants, to read a page or two, sometimes more, about a plant hunter without a hint of what plants he found. (No women plant hunters allowed.)

This is definitely a book about the hunters and not the hunted. Hair's breadth escapes or failures to escape dominate the anecdotes. A great many plant hunters died in the field, typically falling off cliffs, but there were other ways. More than a couple were chopped up by Buddhist monks.

Rather more about rather fewer hunters would have made for a better book. When Whittle does give a subject some elbow room, as he does with his nominee for greatest of all collectors, David Douglas, it still is not enough. About the only subject who gets just about the right amount of space (seven pages) is Nathanial Ward, who devised the Wardian case, although he was not a plant hunter himself but a GP in the East End of London.

This is an insubstantial work, suitable for idling away a few hours in the late winter when the seed catalogs have become dog-eared.

It hardly seems to have earned a place in Horticulture magazine's Garden Classics, and the edition I have is anything but a classic. Reprinted, complete with howlers, from the plates of the 1970 edition, it includes two pages of acknowledgments for permission to reprint illustrations but not the illustrations themselves.

If you are going to spend the time it takes to read this book, turn hunter yourself and find the original Chilton edition and give the Lyons & Burford/Horticulture paperback reprint a miss.