The Atlas of Botany by FRANCIS HALLÉ, with ÉLIANE PATRIARCA Translated by ERIC BUTLER

MIT PRESS RRP $49.99

FRANCIS HALLÉ IS an accomplished botanist who has spent 40 years travelling around the world in search of strange and wonderful plants.

He is also a talented artist, with a beguiling naïve style. In this book he recounts some of his more memorable discoveries, accompanied by lovely illustrations.

The combination of fact, travelogue, anecdote and hand-drawn art gives the result a notably old-fashioned edge, an echo of the nineteenth century “gentleman scholar”. This, however, is no bad thing.

The Atlas of Poetic Botany is a book that, like botany itself, invites quiet, meandering contemplation, the appreciation of beauty and, as the pages turn, a sense of wonder.