Flower Hunters - Hardcover

Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin are among the best-known current popular science writers. Together, they have written many acclaimed books, including Ice Age, FitzRoy, Stardust, and Big Numbers.
Mary is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with a special interest in plants and exploration. John is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the author of books including The Universe: A Biography, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, and Science: A History.

Veteran science writers, the Gribbins (Richard Feynman: A Life in Science) tell the stories of 11 18th- and 19th-century botanical explorers. Two were Swedes, including the renowned taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who botanized in Lapland. The others came from Great Britain, including Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain Cook, and Francis Masson, sent to South Africa by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. With David Douglas, sent to North America by the Horticultural Society of London to obtain plants to sell to affluent gardeners, came the age of plant exploration for profit. Robert Fortune was sent to China to collect tea plants for the East India Company. Richard Spruce obtained seeds of the South American tree that produces quinine, the drug used to treat malaria. Joseph Hooker brought rhododendrons from India to Victorian Britain. Marianne North searched several continents for material for her flower paintings. The adventures of these botanists, who often risked their lives in search of exotic species, should make for exciting reading, but the Gribbins' dry biographical sketches fail to capture the drama. 30 color and b&w illus not seen by PW. (June)
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