Continuing with the theme of enormous new books this week here in The Well-read Naturalist, the recently published “Aquatic Plants of Northern and Central Europe including Britain and Ireland” from Princeton University Press in their WILDGuides series is a tome that would indeed cause Neville Longbottom himself to sit up and take notice.
Should the American Robins or Blue Jays, or any creature most humans can readily identify and see with regularity, rapidly decline in numbers, alarm bells would be rung near and far. However if the American Elms rapidly began to sicken and die, few but the most botanically astute would likely even notice until it was far too late.
For readers of Prof. Maura Flannery’s superb long-running blog on the subject of herbaria, the simple statement “Prof. Maura Flannery has written a book on the history of herbaria” is a sufficient declaration to cause a run on copies at bookshops across the land. However for those not already among the readers of her blog, I hope these humble words I’ve here assembled will cause both regular readership of it as well as a run to your local bookshop.
Written by Dr. Paul Smith, with a foreword by Dr. Robert Macfarlane, “Trees” provides its readers with a copiously illustrated compendium of information arranged and presented in a manner that makes it very accessible to all regardless of their previous familiarity with the subject.