This beautifully illustrated book is an identification guide to 1000 of the world's best-known trees, from huge redwoods to small garden trees. It can be used as a field guide or as an educational tool to identify species and individual trees, learn about how trees grow, the environments they grow in, and the species and varieties that proliferate in different areas and habitats all around the world. A comprehensive introduction looks at the origins of trees, how they have evolved over time and the ways in which they have adapted to suit the variety of terrains in which they thrive. Each of a tree's constituent parts - bark, trunk, leaves, needles, cones, flowers, and fruit - are looked at in detail and the author discusses the role each plays in the tree's survival. The rich variety of habitats in which trees proliferate, from redwood forests to desert plains are all described. The second section of the book is a visual encyclopedia of the most common, popular, prolific or unusual trees found in the world. Each entry is illustrated with a watercolour artwork and includes identification details such as bark texture and colour, leaf shape and size, and flowering time, as well as average height and overall tree shape, so that trees can be easily identified. Interesting features are discussed and photographic details of many trees are included. Trees are one of the oldest living forms of plant life on earth. Many individual trees are older than our most ancient buildings, and higher than most of our tallest edifices. They dominate our landscapes and enrich our history, culture and traditions. It is essential that we recognise them, study them, learn about them, nuture and preserve them. This extraordinary new volume provides a massively intensive reference source for everything to do with these wonderful creations, and will form a vital part of every natural history and general library.
Show moreThis beautifully illustrated book is an identification guide to 1000 of the world's best-known trees, from huge redwoods to small garden trees. It can be used as a field guide or as an educational tool to identify species and individual trees, learn about how trees grow, the environments they grow in, and the species and varieties that proliferate in different areas and habitats all around the world. A comprehensive introduction looks at the origins of trees, how they have evolved over time and the ways in which they have adapted to suit the variety of terrains in which they thrive. Each of a tree's constituent parts - bark, trunk, leaves, needles, cones, flowers, and fruit - are looked at in detail and the author discusses the role each plays in the tree's survival. The rich variety of habitats in which trees proliferate, from redwood forests to desert plains are all described. The second section of the book is a visual encyclopedia of the most common, popular, prolific or unusual trees found in the world. Each entry is illustrated with a watercolour artwork and includes identification details such as bark texture and colour, leaf shape and size, and flowering time, as well as average height and overall tree shape, so that trees can be easily identified. Interesting features are discussed and photographic details of many trees are included. Trees are one of the oldest living forms of plant life on earth. Many individual trees are older than our most ancient buildings, and higher than most of our tallest edifices. They dominate our landscapes and enrich our history, culture and traditions. It is essential that we recognise them, study them, learn about them, nuture and preserve them. This extraordinary new volume provides a massively intensive reference source for everything to do with these wonderful creations, and will form a vital part of every natural history and general library.
Show moreCatherine Cutler is the supervisor of the humid tropics biome at the award-winning Eden Project, in Cornwall, England. She was responsible for overseeing the planting, design and development of the biome, from its beginnings, as a tropical paradise. Her career has included a study and work period in Malaysia's National Orchid Garden in Kuala Lumpur, where she took part in an environmetally orientated forestation scheme, propagating native rainforest trees in east Malaysia, and working in India maintaining and cataloguing formal gardens. Her travel in the tropics included study of agro-forestry systems in Kenya and spice-growing in the Caribbean. Martin Walters is a writer, editor and naturalist, based in Cambridge, UK. He studied Zoology at Oxford, and worked for several years as Biological Sciences Editor at Cambridge University Press where he was responsible for developing the botany, ecology and natural history lists, before becoming a freelance editor and writer. He now works partly in connection with the People and Plants Initiative of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), organizing their publications. He is a keen field naturalist, with a special interest in botany, birds, habitats and conservation. Martin has published regularly, including field guides to birds and flowers, and nature reference books. He has also translated and adapted natural history books, including books on birds and botany, and is General Editor of the recent Travellers' Nature Guides to Britain, France, Greece and Spain (Oxford University Press), co-author of the Nature Guide to Britain in that series, and contributed much of the text on natural habitats to the popular reference book Earth (Dorling Kindersley 2003). His current projects include writing for a forthcoming Travel Guide to China, and working on a major new Plant book (both Dorling Kindersley 2004). He has served on the Wicken Fen advisory panel and is a member of his local Wildlife Trust, Cambridge Bird Club, Cambridge Natural History Society, National Trust, RSPB and BTO, and is also a member of the editorial board of Nature in Cambridgeshire, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and an Associate of WWF. Tony Russell's career with plants began in 1978, when he joined the United Kingdom Forestry Commission, in Snowdonia. In 1983 he became Forester in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. Then, in 1989, he was appointed Head Forester of the United Kingdom's National Arboretum at Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, England - one of the finest collections of trees and shrubs in the temperate world. There he was responsible, among other things, for the conservation of rare and endangered tree species. Tony is recognized as one of the United Kingdom's leading authorities on trees. Over the last few years he has become a familiar face and voice on television and radio, presenting horticultural and arboricultural programmes, including Cotswold Garden Trail, Roots and Shoots, and BBC Gardeners' Question Time. His latest television series, Great Trees, was highly acclaimed.
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