'This is botanical illustration at the highest level.' - The Artist Christabel King is the foremost botanical artist at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, world leaders in the study and preservation of plant species. Here she shares her passion for depicting plants, both in scientific illustrations and in looser botanical art. This inspiring guide covers everything you need to know: choose a subject and create a vibrant composition; accurately sketch, shade and colour leaves, flowers, cacti and more; finally, press and preserve your own treasured specimens. A chapter on travel drawing gives a flavour of the author's worldwide experience, and there are many of her beautiful plates from the prestigious Curtis's Botanical Magazine. There is a helpful section on suitable subjects for beginners and a glossary of terms, to get you started in the beautiful art of botanical illustration.

This is the perfect guide for every budding forager. Exquisitely illustrated with full-colour paintings of all the plants and herbs in the book, ranging from dandelion and sorrel to sea beet and samphire, Edible Wild Plants and Herbs is both a cookbook and field guide to the identification and use of foodstuffs from the wild. There are almost 400 recipes covering nearly 100 different plant varieties and the illustrations, drawn from life by one of the country’s leading botanical artists, show the edible parts of the plants at their peak time for picking. In addition there is a calendar indicating what plants to look for at each season of the year, information on where the plants are found and how to identify them. In the past the home kitchen provided a family with all its medicines and cosmetics as well as its food, wine, pickles and preserves. Our ancestors were resourceful and imaginative and very much in tune with nature; this book recaptures their harmonious, sustainable way of life by setting down for the modern reader all that knowledge and lore. There are recipes for soups, sauces, main dishes, salads, pickles, jams, sorbets, as well as teas, syrups and lotions. Published originally in 1980 under the title All Good Things Around Us, this book became a classic work on the subject. It has been entirely revised and updated and redesigned with new recipes and information.

This volume was first published in 1997, providing a comprehensive, botanically detailed survey of this beautiful group of plants since publication of The Genus Iris by W. R. Dykes. Following the pattern of the original Dykes monograph, botanical details, cultivation suggestions and general comments are supplied, and the work is generously illustrated with accurate line drawings, pictures of unusual species and distribution maps. This survey takes into account the many changes in classification which have taken place in the group. Information scattered in the literature is brought together in one volume to provide an authoritative reference for professional botanists and growers, and a mine of useful information for amateur gardeners and iris enthusiasts. A 2010 preface has been written especially for the re-issue of this important text. The colour plates have been removed for this printing and placed on the web at www.cambridge.org/9780521206433.