The Trees of North America: Michaux and Redouté's American Masterpiece

by Gregory Long (Foreword), David Allen Sibley (Afterword), Marta McDowell (Introduction)

This Tiny Folio™ presents, in modern taxonomic order, all 277 of the hand-colored plates from François-André Michaux’s classic North American Sylva, as well as the supplemental volumes by Thomas Nuttall. These masterworks of nineteenth-century botanical illustration—by such artists as Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Pancrace Bessa—represent the leaves, fruit, and flowers of American trees with wonderful grace and clarity.


Published in cooperation with the New York Botanical Garden, The Trees of North America includes a preface and introduction describing how Michaux and Nuttall’s pioneering work came to be.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Art

336 pages, Hardcover

Published April 13, 2021

Reviews

[Dan Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lithographic illustrations, the true focus and meat of this book, are to American trees what Audubon's paintings are for American birds. They are both art and history. And they are gorgeous. The supplementary material is good, too.

[Rebekah Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art in this book is incredible and makes it easy to recognize trees by their leaves. I found the information about the Michaux father and son team, and Thomas Nuttall to be quite interesting.
This book is very small in size being not even 5 inches in height and around 4 1/4 inches wide. This makes it a little difficult to read. Since this has replicated plates of earlier works, the original writing is almost impossible to read.
But it still makes an interesting coffee table book.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet plates