THE COMING OF THE FLOWERS
By
An English book and quite off the beaten track, as the author dips deep into the legend and story, the biography and history of flowers, where they came from and how they got here. Plant hunting, he finds, goes back some 3000 years to ancient Egypt. Explorers, travelers, the Church particularly through missionaries, made their contribution. Wars and trade and of practice added further. This book is a distillation of profound scholarship, a choice section of bat of interest to flower lovers. Many of our favorite flowers today are traced to their sources, whence they came, how they got their names, by what checkered progress they came to western lands. Some of the famous names not only in botany but in science, religion, exploration are here:- the pirate-naturalist, Dampier, Linna, whose nomenclature still holds, not only in flowers but in shells. Sir Joseph Banks, Father Plumier, the Fosters, David Nelson, James Bowie, Forrest, Russell, Robert Fortune these are a few of the names associated with flowers. An oddly fascinating small book -- for a very special sort of market.