Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

"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.

This book is in a way the "Laertus" of botanical explorers, full of information and gossip, descriptions of the historical periods in which the explorations took place, and the technologies and economics driving the field forward. All of this in a great, slightly sarcastic tone that makes it a real page turner.

One note: for the most part, the book only discusses the actual plants in passing...a bit of botanical background might be useful. On the other hand, I'm sure it would be just as good a read without the background knowledge, as the book is more about people than plants.