'This is a treasure ... Such a celebration of the wheel of the year' JACKIE MORRIS, CILIP Kate Greenaway winner of The Lost Words on The Hare and the MoonCatherine Hyde follows the journey of the bee and the sun in a calendar of glorious full colour paintings that celebrate the sensory delights of herbs and spices, seasoned with bee and plant lore. From the rising and setting of the Pleiades, from sunrise to sunset, the bee and the sun work in harmony, a miracle of nature, growth and new life. Beneath the shifting constellations, equinoxes and solstice markers, as the bee progresses from plant to flower, acclaimed artist Catherine Hyde pays tribute to the magic and mystery of nature. Snippets of ancient bee beliefs and plant folklore are complemented by paintings of ginger, cardamon, marjoram, vanilla, nutmeg, basil, juniper, lavender and many more delights. A book to treasure, and an ode to the wonder of nature.

Brimming with engaging writing and stirring photography, Forest is an ode to the natural world and a celebration of the relationship between humans and trees.

Discover the secrets hidden within the Earth's lush woodlands and wild landscapes through photographs and stories about enchanting forests, magnificent trees, and people who live off the land.

Journeying across North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, writer Matt Collins and photographer Roo Lewis capture the history, science, and human stories behind some of the most enchanting natural environments in the world.

• Explores the captivating history behind some of the world's most enchanting forests
• Organized by tree species, including the hearty pines in Spain's Tamada forest, the towering firs of the American West, the striking Birch groves of Germany's Elbe Valley, and beyond
• A blend of beautiful photographs, scientific trivia, and engaging human stories

Forest is an arresting tribute to the magnificence of the natural world and a wonderful gift for anyone who enjoys spending time in the outdoors.

Complete with gorgeous photography and engaging stories of people living in harmony with nature, readers will learn everything they dream of knowing about the forests of the world.

• A handsome gift for photographers, travel and outdoor enthusiasts, environmentalists, and science lovers
• A stunning way to learn about the world and the trees that surround us
• Great for readers who couldn't get enough of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Ancient Trees by Beth Moon, and Wise Trees by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

'Some five years ago, I sought solace from the ways of the world by stepping into the embrace of an ancient oak tree . . . From the first meeting, there grew a strange sense of attachment I did not consciously recognise until I later began to realise the significance that trees, and oak trees especially, can have in our lives.' James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the Honywood Oak. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when Magna Carta was signed. Initially visiting the tree for escape and solitude, in time he learns to study it more closely. He examines how our long-standing dependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into myth and legend. The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative and healing book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.

The natural and cultural history of an iconic plant The palmetto, also known as the cabbage palm or Sabal palmetto, is an iconic part of the southeastern American landscape and the state tree of Florida and South Carolina. In The Palmetto Book, Jono Miller offers surprising facts and dispels common myths about an important native plant that remains largely misunderstood.Miller answers basic questions such as: Are palms trees? Where did they grow historically? When should palmettos be pruned? What is swamp cabbage and how do you prepare it? Did Winslow Homer's watercolors of palmettos inadvertently document rising sea level? How can these plants be both flammable and fireproof? Based on historical research, Miller argues that cabbage palms can live for more than two centuries. The palmettos that were used to build Fort Moultrie at the start of the Revolutionary War thwarted a British attack on Charleston-and ended up on South Carolina's flag. Delving into biology, Miller describes the anatomy of palm fronds and their crisscrossed leaf bases, called bootjacks. He traces the underground "saxophone" structure of the young plant's root system. He explores the importance of palmettos for many wildlife species, including Florida Scrub-Jays and honey bees. Miller also documents how palmettos can pose problems for native habitats, citrus groves, and home landscapes. From Low Country sweetgrass baskets to Seminole chickees and an Elvis Presley movie set, the story of the cabbage palm touches on numerous dimensions of the natural and cultural history of the Southeast. Exploring both the past and present of this distinctive species, The Palmetto Book is a fascinating and enlightening journey.

Learn to identify wild berries and fruits with this handy field guide, organized by color. Get the popular field guide by expert author Teresa Marrone, and get started on your way to becoming a forager. Teresa has been gathering and preparing wild edibles for more than 20 years, and she shares her foraging experience with you. Use this book with confidence as you learn about nearly 200 species found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The species are organized by color and then by form, so when you see a red berry, go to the red section to learn what it is. Book Features Species organized by color, then by form Full-page photos and insets showing each plant's key identification points Interesting tidbits about the plants' many uses Range maps, ripening calendar, and more Nearly 200 wild berries and fruits in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan Learn what's edible and what to avoid with this easy-to-use field guide. Fact-filled information contains the particulars that you want to know, while full-page photographs provide the visual detail needed for accurate identification.

A captivating cultural and scientific history of orchards, for readers of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire and Mark Kurlansky's Salt. Throughout history, orchards have nourished both body and soul: they are sites for worship and rest, inspiration for artists and writers, and places for people to gather. In Taming Fruit, award-winning writer Bernd Brunner interweaves evocative illustrations with masterful prose to show that the story of orchards is a story of how we have shaped nature to our desires for millennia. As Brunner tells it, the first orchards may have been oases dotted with date trees, where desert nomads stopped to rest. In the Amazon, Indigenous people maintained mosaic gardens centuries before colonization. Modern fruit cultivation developed over thousands of years in the East and the West. As populations expanded, fruit trees sprang from the lush gardens of the wealthy and monasteries to fields and roadsides, changing landscapes as they fed the hungry. But orchards don't just produce fruit; they also inspire great artists. Taming Fruit shares paintings, photographs, and illustrations alongside Brunner's enchanting descriptions and research, offering a multifaceted--and long-awaited-portrait of the orchard.

The beauty of flowers is well known, inspiring creative minds from Botticelli to Beatrix Potter. But they've also played a key part in forming the past, and may shape our future. Roses and thistles have served as symbols of monarchs, dynasties and nations. We wear poppies to remember the First World War, but it was the elderflower that treated its wounded soldiers. A rose might mend a broken heart, and sunflowers may just save our planet. At once enchanting and intriguing, The Brief Life of Flowers reveals how even the most ordinary of flowers have extraordinary stories to tell.

The Complete Language of Herbs is a comprehensive encyclopedia providing the meanings, powers, facts, and folklore for over 500 herbs and spices. Along with a beautiful visual depiction, each entry provides the herb or spice's scientific and common names, characteristics, and historic meanings and powers from mythology, medieval legends, folklore, and flower poetry. Did you know that allspice can be added to herbal mixtures to attract money or luck? Or that sprinkling arrowroot at the doors of your home will keep guests' negative energy from entering? Reaching the height of popularity during the Victorian era, floriographies-dictionaries of symbolic flower meanings-were an amusing pastime and art to subtly communicate unspoken emotions. To complement the success of The Complete Language of Flowers, author S. Theresa Dietz has scoured historic sources and compiled an equally beautiful compendium in The Complete Language of Herbs, revealing the secrets and powers of hundreds of common and forgotten herbs and spices from around the world. Together with stunning full-color illustrations and two indexes, one for searching by common herb and spice name and the other organized by meaning, this beautiful reference is a must-have for gardeners, chefs, party planners, and food enthusiasts. Elegantly designed and beautifully illustrated, the Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia series offers comprehensive, display-worthy references on a range of intriguing topics, including birthday astrology, dream interpretation, astrological self-care practices, techniques for harnessing the power of dreams, and the stories behind signs and symbols.

From the reviews:

"Serre's notes on groups acting on trees have appeared in various forms (all in French) over the past ten years and they have had a profound influence on the development of many areas, for example, the theory of ends of discrete groups. This fine translation is very welcome and I strongly recommend it as an introduction to an important subject. In Chapter I, which is self-contained, the pace is fairly gentle. The author proves the fundamental theorem for the special cases of free groups and tree products before dealing with the (rather difficult) proof of the general case." (A.W. Mason in Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society 1982)

Learn to transform your outdoor space into a flourishing, vibrant garden with this fail-safe guide. Gardening expert Ellen Mary takes you through every step of gardening, from the basics of understanding your space and decoding plant labels, to common pests and how to keep your plants alive once they're in the ground. Packed full of practical information, this book is relevant for any beginner gardener, no matter what type of outdoor space you have - whether you're looking for ideas for green-filled balconies, or larger low-maintenance plots. You'll also find tailored advice for different levels of time investment, whether you have just 10 minutes or 4 hours per week to spend in your garden. Once you've got the basics covered, you'll learn key gardening skills including: - Planting flower beds - How and when to prune - Composting correctly - How to grow a lawn, trees and roses So, flex those green fingers, get your hands dirty and enjoy the process of creating a beautiful, blooming garden.

RHS Staff Pick of the Year 2021 Spectator Gardening Book of the year 2021 'A refreshingly insightful history of plant introductions.' - Roy Lancaster Travel the world with extraordinary tales of the botanical discoveries that have shaped empires, built (and destroyed) economies, revolutionised medicine and advanced our understanding of science. Circling the globe from Australia's Botany Bay to the Tibetan plateau, from the deserts of Southern Africa to the jungles of Brazil, this book presents an incredible cast of characters - dedicated researchers and reckless adventurers, physicians, lovers and thieves. Meet dauntless Scots explorer David Douglas and visionary Prussian thinker Alexander von Humboldt, the 'Green Samurai' Mikinori Ogisu and the intrepid 17th century entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian - the first woman known to have made a living from science. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 botanical artworks from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this absorbing book tells the stories of how plants have travelled across the world - from the missions of the Pharaohs right up to 21st century seed-banks and the many new and endangered species being named every year. *** THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW is a world-famous research organisation and a major international visitor attraction. It harnesses the power of its science, the rich diversity of its gardens and collections to unearth why plants and fungi matter to everyone. Its aspiration is to end the extinction crisis and help create a world where nature and biodiversity are protected, valued and managed sustainably.

Leonardo da Vinci once mused that "we know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot," an observation that is as apt today as it was five hundred years ago. The biological world under our toes is often unexplored and unappreciated, yet it teems with life. In one square meter of earth, there live trillions of bacteria, millions of nematodes, hundreds of thousands of mites, thousands of insects and worms, and hundreds of snails and slugs. But because of their location and size, many of these creatures are as unfamiliar and bizarre to us as anything found at the bottom of the ocean. Lavishly illustrated with nearly three hundred color illustrations and masterfully rendered black-and-white drawings throughout, "Life in the Soil" invites naturalists and gardeners alike to dig in and discover the diverse community of creatures living in the dirt below us. Biologist and acclaimed natural history artist James B. Nardi begins with an introduction to soil ecosystems, revealing the unseen labors of underground organisms maintaining the rich fertility of the earth as they recycle nutrients between the living and mineral worlds. He then introduces readers to a dazzling array of creatures: wolf spiders with glowing red eyes, snails with 120 rows of teeth, and 10,000-year-old fungi, among others. Organized by taxon, "Life in the Soil" covers everything from slime molds and roundworms to woodlice and dung beetles, as well as vertebrates from salamanders to shrews. The book ultimately explores the crucial role of soil ecosystems in conserving the worlds above and below ground. A unique and illustrative introduction to the many unheralded creatures that inhabit our soils and shape our environment above-ground, "Life in the Soil" will inform and enrich the naturalist in all of us.

The yew is one of the most fascinating and versatile life forms on Earth, botanically rich and intriguing, and culturally almost without comparison. In history, mythology, religion, folklore, medicine and warfare, this tree bears timeless witness to a deep relationship with mankind. Yew was the wood chosen to make some of mankind's oldest artefacts: spears, bows and musical instruments. These include items like the prehistoric spear found near Clacton, the 2,000-year-old wooden pipes from Greystones, County Wicklow and, of course, the famous medieval English longbow. In modern medicine, too, yew has proved a boon. Since 1992 taxol/paclitaxel has helped revolutionise the treatment of certain types of cancer. In botanical terms, yew is a mass of contradictions. It is a conifer which bears scarlet 'berries' with sweet juicy pulp instead of cones. It is highly poisonous in all its parts except the red fruit pulp, and yet both wild and domesticated animals feed upon it. It can live for thousands of years with the potential to renew itself. A new tree from an interior root can grow slowly within the hollow trunk of an ancient yew and centuries later 'take over' the older tree. When it come to habitat, the yew tree is nothing if not versatile. It can grown on different continents at a wide range of altitudes: from rainy Edinburgh to sultry Istanbul, from Canada to Mexico, Scandinavia to North Africa and Sumatra, Japan and the Himalayas. Fred Hageneder's fascinating book is the first to cover all aspects of the botany as well as the cultural history and mythology of the genus Taxus. This is the remarkable story of the oldest living things in Europe.

Quotes, facts, wit & wisdom in a fun-filled format

Beech, birch, ash, sycamore, oak. Maple, mango, hawthorn, cherry. Scots pine and Japanese cedar . . . The company of trees is different from that of any other living thing. This is a story of the humans who love trees. From tree sitters to nature lawyers, from climbers to climate strikers, from planters to pruners, from forest therapists to trauma survivors, from city gardeners to rewilders. These are voices of passion, sorrow, anger, nurture, solace and wonder. Trees are our past and our present - our future, too. FOR THE LOVE OF TREES is about why trees matter and what we owe them. It's about our humanity, our devotion and our sheer awe.

Thomas Pakenham's beautifully illustrated, bestselling book of tree portraits. With this astonishing collection, Thomas Pakenham produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owes little to conventional botany. The sixty trees are grouped according to their own strong personalities: Natives, Travellers, Shrines, Fantasies and Survivors. From the ancient native trees, many of which are huge and immeasurably old, to the exotic newcomers from Europe, the East and North America, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES captures the history and beauty of these entrancing living structures. Common to all these trees is their power to inspire awe and wonder. This is a lovingly researched book, beautifully illustrated with colour photographs, engravings and maps - a moving testimonial to the Earth`s largest and oldest living structures.

Here are fresh ways of seeing and understanding nature with a vivid journey through the seasons. Detailed facts are interwoven with artistic insights. Readers are helped by simple observation exercises, by inspiring illustrations that make a companion guide to plant growth around the year. A wide variety of common plants axe beautifully drawn, from seed to bud to flower and fruit. The drawings are accompanied by helpful suggestions that encourage readers to try out the observation and drawing exercises.

The orchid family is one of the largest plant families in the world, reaching its highest diversity in the tropics where their exotic and colourful flowers are often truly breathtaking. Britain and Ireland have just 52 species of wild orchid, some of which are rare or scarce, whilst others are surprisingly inconspicuous. Yet, whether large or small, all orchids share flamboyant flower structures and incredible beauty. This pocket guide allows the identification of all species of orchid in the British Isles. It has concise text highlighting ID criteria as well as notes on biology, habitat and conservation, along with stunning colour photographs and accurate range maps based on maps compiled by the Biological Record Centre. This book provides the perfect guide to these beautiful and evocative plants, and is a must for any field naturalist.

Delve deep into the trees and find wonder in our UK woodlands. Step back from the pressures of everyday life and reconnect with nature and its mindful magic with this absorbing and engaging guide. Learn what you can see at different times of the year and recognise the stunning trees, flowers and plants, multi-hued birds and insects, and mysterious mammals that call these habitats home. Soon you will be marvelling at rutting deer, soaking up the view of beautiful bluebells, and entering the world of bumbling badgers and fantastic foxes, while also enjoying the rapturous sound of glorious birdsong. Press pause on your modern worries and go back to your ancestors' roots by foraging for nuts and berries. Become aware of the signs that indicate one season transforming into another. Search for fairytale mushrooms and at the same time understand why they are essential to our environment. Discover the science, history and folklore associated with the oak, ash and birch. On your seasonal adventures through our enigmatic woodlands, be humbled by their importance to our interconnected ecosystem, and be inspired to protect these precious places for the betterment of the world. This accessible guide, with its attractive and original photos, will help you to build an everlasting bond with your local wildlife and woodlands, thus enriching your well-being and life.

This attractive, practical guide explains how to transform backyard gardens into living ecosystems that are not only enjoyable retreats for humans, but also thriving sanctuaries for wildlife. Beautifully illustrated with full-color photographs, this book provides easy-to-follow recommendations for providing food, cover, and water for birds, bees, butterflies, and other small animals. Emphasizing individual creativity over conventional design, Bauer asks us to consider the intricate relationships between plants and wildlife and our changing role as steward, rather than manipulator, of these relationships.
In an engaging narrative that endorses simple and inexpensive methods of wildlife habitat gardening, Nancy Bauer discusses practices such as recycling plant waste on site, using permeable pathways, growing regionally appropriate plants, and avoiding chemical fertilizers and insecticides. She suggests ways of attracting pollinators through planting choices and offers ideas for building water sources and shelters for wildlife. A plant resource guide, tips for propagating plants, seasonal plants for hummingbirds, and host plants for butterflies round out "The California Wildlife Habitat Garden," making it an indispensable primer for those about to embark on creating their own biologically diverse, environmentally friendly garden.

Eddy V AN DER MAAREL This volume is the first of two volumes covering the Sym computer programmes for the rapid clustering and ordina posium 'Advances in vegetation science', which was held at tion of very large sets of reI eves and for (subsequent) table Nijmegen, The Netherlands, from 15-19 May 1979. This rearrangement (this volume as well as the book Data symposium was organized on behalf of the Working Group Processing in Phytosociology contain various new pro for Data-Processing of the International Society for Vege grams). What we do not have is a manual in which the tation Science. After this group held its final meeting two apparently successful methods are compared and applied years earlier it decided to continue its activities, but within a to some data-sets. H. Lieth, editor-in-chief of a new Junk wider scope. Most members of the Group felt that the series 'Tasks for vegetation science' already suggested to original aim, i. e. the introduction of data-processing and produce such a manual in this series. multivariate methods for use in the systematic description The present volume contains the texts of the lectures and of plant communities, was more or less fulfilled. The book most of the poster demonstrations of the first three sessions Data -Processing in Phytosociology, largely based on papers of the Symposium, dealing with classification and ordina in Vegetatio, edited by E. van der Maarel, L. Orloci & S."