Around the World in 80 Trees

Product Information

In a confined space the smell of the durian fruit can be overwhelming, and signs telling people not to bring durians into hotels or aircraft are common in Malaysia and Singapore.

Travelling eastwards from his London home, he chooses 80 trees from the 60,000 or so species on the planet. The smooth bark of the beech has long been associated with writing: beech boards once enclosed vellum books and in many languages the words for this tree and for the written word are similar.Jonathan Drori CBE is a Trustee of The Eden Project and Cambridge Science Centre, an Ambassador for the WWF, and was for nine years a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and The Woodland Trust. The strawberry tree is native to the western Mediterranean and the southwest of Ireland – but not Britain. Focus spreads will explore subjects such as the life cycle of trees, how they communicate with each other, why trees are vital to the Earth's health, and their importance to us. Each tree is beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerc using a subdued but rich palette of greens and browns, with occasional splashes of more vibrant colour. In Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori uses plant science and natural history to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life, from the romantic to the regrettable, together with captivating illustrations by Lucille Clerc.

In a previous life at the BBC, he was Executive Producer of more than fifty prime-time science documentaries and popular series. Stops on the trip include the lime trees of Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard, which intoxicate amorous Germans and hungry bees alike, the swankiest streets in nineteenth-century London, which were paved with Australian eucalyptus wood, and the redwood forests of California, where the secret to the trees' soaring heights can be found in the properties of the tiniest drops of water. A hybrid of the American sycamore and the Oriental plane, they have set an example to urban planners around the world. Whether by accident or design, Neolithic sailors are thought to have brought the species with them from the Iberian Peninsula some time between 10000 and 3000 BC.This is a wonderful tour of the Earth’s trees, revealing their unique characteristics and the vital roles they have played in human life and culture.