The Plant Hunter's Atlas

Author: Ambra Edwards. Hardback. 304 pp. 250 x 196 mm. Over 100 botanical paintings. ISBN 9781529410112, Greenfinch in association with RBG Kew, 2021.

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 16th century entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian – the first woman known to have made a living from science.

Beautifully illustrated with over 100 botanical artworks from Kew's archives, 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 seedbanks and the many new and endangered species being described every year.

Ambra Edwards is an award-winning journalist and garden historian, and author of the bestselling book Head Gardeners, voted Book of the Year by the Garden Media Guild in 2017, The Story of the English Garden and The Story of Gardening, written with Penelope Hobhouse.