Flora Britannica

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View books by Richard Mabey.

mistitled but fun - Rated
It is true that this has to be one of the worse titled books of all time. A FLORA in any sense here should be an identification guide and it isn't that at all - it is a personal exploration of various plants concentrating not necessarily on the most important but on those for which the author has an affection for or simply information on. The main interests are folklore and distribution - industry and use and even literature get short shrift, oddly. It is true too that plant introductions are widely covered, but the distinction in terms of salience would be rather misleading (do we miss out horse-chstnut?...). The joy of this book which frankly does NOT look as though it was twenty years (flap) in the making is the writing and out of the way sources Mabey has dug up and in the feel of the book. A strange bestseller - but not to be dismissed.

Serious misdescription - Rated
Flora Britannica may be a fine book for what it is, as an essay or encyclopedia about British plants, but it is NOT what the title and description clearly imply - a comprehensive identification guide. I myself was misled by this, and indeed by the uncritical acceptance of this blatant misrepresentation by reviewers, and ordered a copy, only to find on opening it that it wasn't at all the comprehensive identification guide that I wanted - and so I'm returning it. A slapped wrist for the publisher, presumably the author, and for Amazon for not checking that the book contents match the meaning of the title and description of the work!

Publishers of nature books generally are being given far too much licence to misrepresent certain books in such a way - such as the Collins "Complete" guides, some of which cannot possibly be anything like complete.

Not for the serious horticulturist - Rated
I was thinking for some positives to write on this book and not much came to mind. It is a perfectly fine book. However the name flora brittanica indicates the plants in this book ought to be indiginous to this land but a great number of them are not. So the author spends time telling us about plants that have been brought over here in the last 100 - 200 years which is of no interest to anyone who is interested in FLORA BRITTANICA. Consequently what could have been a book containing a greater source of information on the fewer number of truly native species becomes a book with little information on a grater number of introduced species. Some of our native species aren't even worthy of a photograph where as japanese knotweed gets 2 photographs all because some idiot brought the wretched plant over here a few hundred years ago because he thought it was decorative. The explanation that goes with (most) the plants is largely centered around ancient beliefs about its uses. Which is o.k to the casual reader but doesn't really interest me. I would have liked to have seen which animals and wildlife benifited from each plant and more about the enviroment the plants naturally inhabit.

A good book overall - Rated
This is a very good encyclopedia, with a lot of information about the history and uses of the various plants found in Britain. My only criticism is that the pictures show the plants in their natural habitat rather than close up. This means it is sometimes difficult to identify the plant from the picture. After saying that, this book is not a hady field guide that you would carry round anyway. It being 400+ pages.
As a home fererence work, I can reccomend it, and I have spent ages browsing through it's pages discovering interesting things about the plants that are all arround us.

Paul

Distillation of country lore - Rated
This is a high quality books - with good photographs and decent length entries on the wild flowers, herbs and trees you'll know if you have grown up in the country.

The marvellous bit about it is the way the author has drawn from contributors all over the country who have passed on their local names, stories and memories about common British plants. A real storehouse to be read and enjoyed on those windy and wet days when you can't go out and look for yourself. Many people's memories are from childhood, a reminder that we often really get to know the plants and animals around us in our early years. So it is a book to keep and hand on.