Tales of the Rose Tree: Ravishing Rhododendrons and Their Travels Around the World

by Jane Brown

The history of rhododendrons is full of swashbuckling plant collectors and visionary gardeners, colonial violence and ecological destruction, stunning botanical successes and bitter business disappointments. And it is here related with consummate skill by Jane Brown, an English garden writer clearly besotted by these "glorious and scented strangers, with their mouth-watering candy colors, their cascades of way bells or iridescent globes proffered...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567923127
• ISBN13: 9781567923124
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Learn about what's in your back yard

Considering how many of us have rhododendrons in our back yards, it is amazing how little we know about them. This book fills the gap in our knowledge. It is a first-class history of the plant and the early efforts to bring it to and publicize it in England. It then traces the efforts to propogate the plant around the world. If you like learning about your plants , you will like this book. Well-researched and very well written I unreservedly give it five stars.

You may find other rhododendron specialty books on the market; but none as lively and packed with hu

TALES OF THE ROSE TREE: RAVISHING RHODODENDRONS AND THEIR TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD goes beyond competing gardener's guides which focus on cultivation and natural history to provide a lively historical survey of the history of rhododendrons and their movements around the world. The plant's discovery, early cultivation and collection, and its fascination to botanists makes for a lively set of vignettes and reflections which pairs natural history with human endeavors. You may find other rhododendron specialty books on the market; but none as lively and packed with human history as this. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch