Bookshelf space is precious ground for gardeners so I choose my volumes carefully. Trees, is a reference book supremely worth the full inch it requires! Every photograph is worth framing and clearly connected to the interesting and informative text provided alongside. The book is divided into sections including: Form & Function, Diversity and Design, Communities of Life, Trees and the Human World and the Indispensable Resource of Trees.
Reading a reference book from cover to cover is not one’s usual approach but this book pulls you in. The section of Form & Function moves you through structure, trunk, branches & twigs, wood, bark, roots and it keeps you reading as illustrations of the most amazing examples are given. The Remarkable Trees of the World section provide facts of habitat, height, family, with a tree shape silhouette in shadow and a color photo of its most unique identifying feature.
In Trees and the Human World it illustrates the art, architecture, tools, instruments food, pharmaceuticals and more that trees provide us in our daily life. From Van Gogh to Viking ships, weapons, wheels and barrels the uses of tree products seems limitless.
This is a story of trees and their connection to our lives. It leaves a reader changed, never looking at trees again in the same way.
Trees: A Visual Guide, Tony Rodd & Jennifer Stackhouse University of California Press, 2008.