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Title: Ancient Trees: Trees That Live For 1,000 Years by Anna Lewington, Edward Parker ISBN: 1-85585-974-2 Publisher: Collins & Brown Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A beautiful and informative book
Comment: This absorbing book explores some of the oldest living organisms on the planet. Over eighteen types of trees are investigated, from the skyscraping Redwood of North America to the groundhugging Welwitschia of Namibia. Here is the complete list: Redwood, Brittlecone Pine, Montezuma Cypress, Monkey Puzzle, Amazonian Ancients (including Brazil Nut, Cumaru and Castanha de Macaco), Yew, Oak, Sweet Chestnut, Lime, Olive, Welwitschia, Baobab, Kauri, Totara, Antarctic Beech, Fig, Cedar and Ginkgo. At the beginning of each discussion there is an info panel providing the botanical name, distribution, the oldest known living specimen, historical significance and conservation status of each. The text is quite engaging and the introduction even covers the literary and artistic inspiration of trees in the works of Wordsworth, Vincent van Gogh, Thomas Jefferson, Aldous Huxley, William Blake and others. There is a double page full color map, about 150 beautiful color photographs plus black and white illustrations. The photographs are magnificent. This engrossing and visually impressive work concludes with an extensive bibliography and an index.
Rating: 4
Summary: A likable coffee-table book
Comment: I liked this. I bought this for the pictures of Welwitschia cones, something I did not encounter a good picture of before. Admittedly these are an exception in the degree of detail they show: all the other pictures are 'atmosphere' pictures only. This is really a coffee-table book only, not a tree book.
For a coffee table book it has relatively few errors. Sure, on page 63 the lay-out editor inserted the "(right)" at the wrong place in the caption (should have been after "nuts" instead of "pods") and an occasional misspelling of "ginkgo" slipped through. Worse the taxonomic position of Welwitschia is misdescribed (off the scale). The chapter on yew is indeed riddled with errors. A knowledgable editor with a red pencil could have a whale of a time. But for a coffee-table book it is well above average and it has got its facts mostly straight (and up to date). It is a coffee-table book, not science.
The most remarkable thing wrong with it is that it omitted the best documented oldest genuine tree species, even though it is extremely big. This must be because it occurs about as far away from England as can be. The book has a distinct bias: the world's oldest tree species occur in England with the British Empire's former Colonies bringing up the rear. The rest of the world is devoid of old trees! (Allright, one species that is often planted on English lawns is thrown in to represent the rest of the world). A coffee-table book for sure, meant for the English coffee-table.
Rating: 3
Summary: could be a lot better
Comment: I was hoping for two things in this book. I was hoping to get an insight into what it is that makes it possible for organisms to live so long. All we have here are anecdotes about specific species, no discussion in general about extraordinary longevity in the plant kingdom. Second, I was hoping to get a sense of scale and magnificence looking at the photographs. Personally, I found the photography mediocre. I don't care how grissled and torn up an ancient tree is, a good photographer will find a way of capturing its terrible beauty. There is little of that here. All too often the photos of these ancient beings look like nothing more than a mess. Also, some of the descriptions of the photos sound preposterous. A good example is the picture of the supposedly 6,000 year old lime tree on page 103. The text claims that the copice stool was measured to be 52 feet across. The only sense of scale suggested in the photo is the grass at the base of the stool. If that stool is 62 feet across, that makes the blades of grass 10 to 20 feet long. I just have to shake my head. If the text is building up the collosal size of some of these trees, then the photographer should try to indicate this size with perhaps someone standing next to the tree. I don't think there is a single photo in here with someone standing next to the tree. You want to know about photographing trees? See "Remarkable Trees of the World" by Thomas Pakenham. Now THAT guy knows how to present a collosal image! And his photos are also aesthetic masterpieces.
Is there anything I liked about this book? One thing I took away from this book is an appreciation of how many tree species there are in the world that live to an ancient age. I remember growing up thinking there were only three species that lived a long time: the California redwoods and the Bristlecone Pine. Then I moved to the Pacific Northwest and my knowledge expanded a little more as I discovered that cedars and yews and a few others could live a couple thousand years or so. Pakenham's two tree books then expanded my understanding even more, and now "Ancient Trees" has awakened me to the fact that tree species capable of living thousands of years are not all that uncommon -- maybe uncommon considering the number of tree species extant, but not uncommon geographically. They are everywhere, on all continents. This is a revelation to me. But as another reviewer pointed out, some of the claims in this book sound more like superstitions than scientific facts. 9,000 years for a single tree? I don't care if it IS a yew. Give me some proof, not the testimony of local legends.
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Title: Remarkable Trees of the World by Thomas Pakenham ISBN: 0393049116 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 30 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Fantastic Trees by Edwin A. Menninger, James E. Eckenwalder ISBN: 0881923249 Publisher: Timber Press (OR) Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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