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Hardcover
First published August 15, 2002




• The difference between a dendrologist and an arborist (and that I am very much the former)This book was published in 2002, which is discouraging in that even 20+ years ago, Pakenham was commenting on the imperiled nature of many of the trees shown here, (due to a combination of climate change and over-foresting), particularly Madagascar's unique and irreplaceable baobabs. I've also recently read similarly dated books on the planet's coral reefs and rain forests, all painting nearly identically bleak views of the future…and yet so little has been done in the intervening decades to slow — much less reverse — this trend.
• The sad plight of David Douglas, who despite being "one of the greatest of all plant-hunters" (end after whom the Douglas fir is named), died at just 35 after he fell into a bull pit in Hawaii and was gored to death
• And that — as I've noticed in numerous other books — apparently everyone in England at least reads French, since it seems that any time a French proverb or poem is quoted in a book coming out of the UK, the reader is just assumed to understand it, since I've never seen anything translated (i.e., for us dumb Americans)

