A delight for armchair explorers and aspiring plant hunters, it will open your eyes to the wonders of the natural world.
Reviewer Jodie Jones is a garden writer. Early on in my career, it was my great privilege to telephone Roy Lancaster on a monthly basis to discuss the column he wrote for the gardening magazine I then worked on. Life in the office was always frantic, the view from the window included not a single patch of greenery, but on those days I would make a cup of tea and surrender myself to the delights of hearing Roy talk about plants. Reading this book brought back those happy days.
From his boyhood discovery of a South American tobacco plant in a Bolton allotment to more recent tales of plant hunting in distant lands, this is vintage Lancaster. His passion for plants shines from every page and it is full of fantastic anecdotes, such as the tale from his National Service in Malaya, when having been assigned a hefty Bren machine gun, he stowed the bullets in his trouser pockets and used the large ammunition pouches to store plants, bugs and even snakes that he collected during jungle manoeuvres.
Lancaster is widely regarded as one of the greatest plant hunters of the modern age, but he remains unwaveringly modest about his achievements. This isn’t an autobiography in the usual sense. You won’t find a mention of his OBE or CBE, awarded for services to horticulture, or the prestigious Veitch Memorial Medal and Victoria Medal of Honour bestowed on him by the Royal Horticultural Society. Instead, he is generous in recognising the importance and achievements of his youthful mentors and fellow plantsmen, emphatic in acknowledging the personal and professional debt he owes to his wife Sue, and above all, unwaveringly enthusiastic about the joy that plants have brought to him through his 80 years of life.