lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on wild plants, plant science and botanical illustration

Click on the small images at right to see a larger picture

210080 Anderson, Frank J. The Complete Book of 169 Redoute Roses Abbeville Press, New York, 1979. Quarto hardcover; green cloth boards with gilt spine titling and upper board rose decoration; 149pp., colour illustrations. Spotting to text block edges; toned page edges and one or two scattered spots to pages; 'horticultural training centre' stamp three times within. Illustrated dustwrapper mildly rubbed with some light toning to edges, one or two tiny scrapes at corners; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $35

40878 Attenborough, David The Private Life of Plants A natural history of plant behaviour BBC Books, London, 1995. Small quarto, hardcover, colour illustrations, 320pp. Minor wear; mild spotting to upper text block edges and a few scattered spots on half title page. Otherwise very good to near fine in like dustwrapper. Based on the popular six-part BBC program, this book offers what writer/filmmaker David Attenborough is best known for delivering: an intimate view of the natural world wherein a multitude of miniature dramas unfold. In the program and book, both titled The Private Life of Plants, Attenborough treks through rainforests, mountain ranges, deserts, beaches, and home gardens to show us things we might never have suspected about the vegetation that surrounds us. With their extraordinary sensibility, plants compete endlessly for survival and interact with animals and insects: they can see, count, communicate, adjust position, strike, and capture. Attenborough makes the plant world a vivid place for readers, who in this book can enjoy the tour at their own pace, taking in the lively descriptions and nearly 300 full-colour photos showing plants in close detail. Click here to order $25

69429 Bianchini, Francesco & Francesco Corbetta & Marilena Pistoia Fruits of the Earth Cassell, London, 1975. Quarto hardcover; green cloth boards with white spine titling, lime endpapers and rear pages comprising Appendices, Bibliography and Index of Latin names a matching green; 303pp., colour illustrations. Minor wear; mild scattered spotting to pastedown edges and mark on endpaper; mild foxing to title and half-title pages; spotting to text block edges. Illustrated dustwrapper with mild sunning along spine. Very good to near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. This lavish volume pays homage to the extraordinarily varied world of fruits and vegetables, offering what may well be the most magnificent colour plates created in this field today, and a thoroughly informative text. Almost every edible plant is described in its pages, grouped into categories according to use, such as cereals and grains, aromatic and seasoning herbs, spices, nuts, stimulants, starch, sugar and oil plants, as well as traditional fruits and vegetables. The authors give the origin of approximately 400 plants, examining the areas in which they flourish, their uses and composition, their relation to nutrition and health, the varieties available, and many other little-known horticultural facts. This handsome volume is a great tribute to nature, a memorable gift book that will make a lasting impression on everyone concerned with her beauty and majesty. Click here to order $60

210061 Cottesloe, Gloria, & Doris Hunt The Duchess of Beaufort's Flowers Webb & Bower, Exeter UK, 1983. Quarto hardcover; yellow boards with brown upper board and spine titling, brown endpapers; 64pp., colour illustrations. Minor wear; rubbed and bumped board edges and corners; spotted text block edges and upper board edges. Illustrated dustwrapper; sunned along spine panel, upper front and fore-edges; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $25

99474 Cribb, Phillip & Michael Tibbs A Very Victorian Passion - The Orchid Paintings of John Day, 1863-1888 From the Botanic Gardens, Kew. Blacker Publishing and Thames and Hudson, London, 2004. Oblong quarto hardcover; 464pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder, new. John Day's ink and watercolour illustrations of over 2300 orchids now form one of the most important botanical archives in the world. This book presents 280 of those illustrations, as well as discussing the Victorians' love of orchids and looking at 'a year in the life of a Victorian orchid grower'. Click here to order $50

76104 Fairley, Alan & Philip Moore Native Plants of the Sydney District An Identification Guide Kangaroo Press, 2000. Second edition. Quarto hardcover; green boards with white spine titling, yellow endpapers; 432pp., colour illustrations. Minor wear; rubbed board edges with slight scraping to corners; dustwrapper spine sunned and small chips at corners. Very good. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Click here to order $35

59343 Gilbert, Lionel The Orchid Man The Life, Work and Memoirs of the Rev. H M R Rupp 1872-1956 Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst NSW, 1992. Small quarto hardcover; green boards with gilt spine titling and illustrated green endpapers; 248pp., mainly monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; slightly bowed front board and lower board edges and corners slightly worn; spotting to upper text block edges. Minor edge wear to illustrated dustwrapper. Very good to near fine otherwise and now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The Orchid Man, Herman Montague Rupp, was an Australian clergyman who began recording his botanical observations and specimens in 1892 and from 1899 made a 'census of the native plants' of his parishes. By 1924 he considered that it was time to 'concentrate on the family which had always attracted me most - the orchids' and gave some 5000 other specimens to the University of Melbourne's botany school. During the next thirty years Rupp published over 200 papers, chiefly on orchids, including descriptions of four new genera and over seventy new species. He also wrote two books on the subject. This book integrates Rupp's memoirs and Lionel Gilbert's biography alongside many fine drawings of orchids. Click here to order $25

210121 Graham, Robin, with Ronald Roy Slipper Orchids The Art of Digby Graham Croom Helm Ltd., London, 1982. Folio; hardcover, full cloth with upper board titles; 109pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and many colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; some light corner bumping; board top edges and spine sunned. Dustwrapper well sunned, especially along the main panel edges and spine panel; a short tear to the top edge of the lower panel; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $45

204950 Griffiths, Mark The Lotus Quest In Search of the Sacred Flower Chatto & Windus, London, 2009. Hardcover, octavo; dark red boards with gilt spine titling and red endpapers 338pp., colour and monochrome plates. Mildly toned text block edges and slight wear to dustwrapper edges. Very good to near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Galvanised by receiving seeds from a three-thousand-year-old lotus, which flowered without difficulty in an English summer, Mark Griffiths set out to track the path of this sublime plant to its home in the Lotus-Lands of Japan. "The Lotus Quest" unveils a stunning vision of Japan's feudal era, as Griffiths visits shrines, ruins, gardens and wild landscapes, and meets priests and archaeologists, philosophers and anthropologists, gardeners and botanists, poets and artists, and even dines on the lotus in a Tokyo cafe. Beautifully illustrated, intensely atmospheric and full of suspense, "The Lotus Quest" shows how the deep crimson of the lotus runs like a tracer dye, tracking the spread, fusion and fission of the world's great civilizations. Click here to order $23

88238 Hansen, Eric Orchid Fever A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy Methuen, London, 2000. Hardcover, octavo; red boards with silver gilt spine titling; 272pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; browned and spotted text block edges and toning to page edges; mild rubbing and wear to dustwrapper edges. Very good. A true story of one of the world's strangest plants and humanity's oddest obsessions: the orchid, brought to book by the author, traveller and self-confessed orchid obsessive. From the Orinoco River to the hothouses of Kew, and the clandestine nurseries of Europe to the peat bogs of Minnesota, this is a dark and humorous tale of orchid smugglers, ice-cream makers and visionary breeders; of corruption, murder and moths with 12-inch tongues; and of the vicious, bizarre world of international plant politics and the wide range of gentle people whose overriding passion is the cultivation of these beautiful, fragile flowers. Click here to order $20

209951 Hoffman, Noel, & Andrew Brown Orchids of South-West Australia Second edition University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands WA, 1992. Reprint: royal octavo; hardcover, illustrated boards and endpaper maps; 428pp., with many monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Minor wear; a little shaken; boards lightly rubbed; some pen impressions to the first few pages. No dustwrapper as issued. Very good. Laid in: a photocopied paper about orchids by one of the authors. Click here to order $90

31688 Kerr, Joan, & Hugh Falkus From Sydney Cove to Duntroon A Family Album of Early Life in Australia Hutchinson Group (Aust.) Pty. Ltd./Victor Gollancz Ltd., Melbourne Vic., 1982. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 128pp., with many monochrome and colour illustrations. Minor wear. Dustwrapper. Near fine. From Sydney Cove to Duntroon, by Joan Kerr and Hugh Falkus, is a well researched and lavishly illustrated family album of early life in Australia. It is the story of two remarkable women, Sophia Palmer and her daughter-in-law Marrianne Collinson Close who both married into the Campbell family and established their homes and gardens at Wharf House, Sydney, and Duntroon, Canberra, respectively. Both were artists of some repute, with a special inclination towards botanical illustration. The authors have collected their little known work together and produced a fine tribute to them, as well as a valuable historical record of early life in Australia. Click here to order $23

203749 Mabey, Richard The Cabaret of Plants Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., New York NY, 2016. Octavo; hardcover; 374pp., with many colour illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. "The Cabaret of Plants" is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey. A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death. Click here to order $25

92386 Mabey, Richard The Frampton Flora The Secrets of Frampton Court Gardens Quercus, London, 1985. Hardcover, folio; black boards with gilt spine titling, marbled endpapers; 208pp., colour illustrations. Near fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film A magnificent production celebrating the extraordinary discovery over twenty years ago of more than 300 Victorian flower paintings in the attic of Frampton Court in Gloucestershire. Bold, exactly observed, and beautifully executed, they represent one of the earliest and most intriguing collections of amateur flower paintings found to date. Between 1828 and 1851, sisters Elizabeth, Charlotte, Catherine and Mary Anne Clifford explored their corner of the country, and succeeded in painting an impressive number of its native plants. "The Frampton Flora" is Richard Mabey's account of the wild flowers, the painters and their paintings as well as an enduring record of the richness of the English countryside in the early 19th century. Illustrated in colour throughout, in a large format, this unique book seeks to recreate the charm and intimacy of the original notebooks in which the watercolours were found. Click here to order $45

207333 McClure, F.A. (Foreword by Gerald Bol; Introduction by Lynn Clark) The Bamboos Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1993. Octavo; paperback; 345pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear. Near fine. Click here to order $18

90354 Maiden, J.H. The Weeds of New South Wales - Part 1 William Applegate Gullick Government Printer, Sydney NSW, 1920. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt upper-board titles; 142pp., on glossy stock, with a full-colour frontispiece, 15 plates likewise and many monochrome illustrations. Moderate wear; water damage to the last third of the book, not affecting the boards; text block bowed; softening to the spine extremities; some scuffing to the upper board; offset to the endpapers; previous owner's ink stamp to the flyleaf. No dustwrapper as issued. As is. Although styled as part one of an ongoing series, only this first volume was ever printed. Click here to order $25

93008 Mathew, Brian, with William T. Stearn and William Patrick Watson (P.J. Redoute, illus.) Lilies and Related Flowers Michael Joseph Ltd., London, 1982. Quarto hardcover; green cloth boards with gilt spine titling and decorated green endpapers; 238pp., colour illustrations. Minor wear; spotting to upper text block edges. Very good to near fine otherwise and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Click here to order $32

91003 Pavord, Anna The Naming of Names The Search for Order in the World of Plants Bloomsbury, London, 2005. Small quarto, hardcover in dustwrapper; red papered boards with black spine titling and illustrated endpapers; 471pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. A few faint spots on upper text block. Near fine otherwise in like dustwrapper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. "The Naming of Names" is about the men who searched for the rules of nature's game. What were plants to be called? What were their similarities and differences? How should they be grouped and ordered? The world was surely more than a random, chaotic jumble, if only the right key could be found to unlock the puzzle. Thus this wonderful study is a thrilling adventure into botanical history. The author travels from Athens in the third century B.C. to Constantinople, and from Venice to the universities of Padua and Pisa. Sumptuously illustrated, this volume is a compelling window into a world full of intrigue and ego. Click here to order $30

52916 Potter, Jennifer Strange Blooms The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants Atlantic Books, London, 2006. First edition. Octavo hardcover; green boards with gilt spine titling and green endpapers; 464pp., monochrome and colour illustrations. Minor wear only; fine in like dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. In seventeenth-century Britain, a new breed of 'curious' gardeners were pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. The man responsible for introducing many of the plants to Britain at that time was John Tradescant, whose passion for collecting sent him as far as Russian Archangel, the pirate strongholds of North Africa and the battlefields of France. Tradescant's only son John was his apprentice. Strange Blooms tells the Tradescants' story - as gardeners, as collectors and above all as exemplars of an age that began in wonder and ended with the dawning of science. Meticulously researched and vividly evoking the drama of their lives, Jennifer Potter's book takes its readers to the edge of an expanding universe. Strange Blooms is a magnificent pleasure for gardeners and non-gardeners alike. Click here to order $30

210148 Proctor, Michael, & Peter Yeo (Sir Julian Huxley, et al., eds.; Jacket designed by Clifford & Rosemary Ellis) The Pollination of Flowers - The New Naturalist series, no.54 Collins, London, 1973. Octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 418pp., with 4pp. of colour plates, 56pp. of monochrome plates and many illustrations likewise. Mild wear; cocked; spine extremities mildly softened; mild toning and spotting to the text block edges; very light offset to the endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is lightly rubbed and edgeworn; spine panel lightly sunned; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $45

63962 Romanowski, Nick Grasses, Bamboos and Related Plants in Australia Lothian, Melbourne Vic., 1993. Paperback, octavo; 168pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Faint spotting to upper text block edges; mild edgewear to covers. Very good. Click here to order $14

9601 Rupp, Rev. H.M.R. The Orchids of New South Wales Government Printer of New South Wales, Sydney NSW, 1969. Facsimile reprint: octavo; hardcover, with gilt upper board titling; 176pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and many diagrams and illustrations likewise. Minor wear. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed with a few tiny tears to the edges; very slightly faded spine; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. Facsimile edition of the book published in 1943. Click here to order $30

35813 Sherwood, Shirley (ed. Victoria Matthews) Contemporary Botanical Artists The Shirley Sherwood Collection Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005. Quarto paperback, 240pp, colour illustrations. Green cloth boards with gilt titling on spine. Minor wear; a few small marks on text block edges; mild rubbing to cover and minimal wear to edges and corner. Very good to near fine. Appendix and bibliography. Celebrating the renaissance of botanical art with work collected during the last five years from over a hundred painters, living in seventeen different countries around the world. Click here to order $35

58531 Sitwell, Sacheverell Great Flower Books 1700-1900 Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1990. Hardcover, quarto, 189pp., monochrome and colour illustrations. Minor wear; faint spotting on upper text block edge and dustwrapper lightly worn at edges; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. This book celebrates the world's greatest natural history monographs; of the artists and craftsmen, entrepreneurs and patrons who created the brilliant florilegiums of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Included are the works of Pierre Joseph Redoute and Robert Thornton, Georg Dionysius Ehret and Jean Louis Prevost, Samuel Curtis, George Brookshaw, and brothers Francis and Ferdinand Bauer. Handasyde Buchanan writes an overview of the period as well as an appendix detailing printing techniques used in the original published illustrations. Click here to order $55

210126 Sprunger, Samuel, Phillip J.W. Cribb & William T. Stearn (eds.) Orchids - two volumes, Texts and Illustrations from the Botanical Register 1815-1847 Birkhauser Verlag, Basel Switzerland, 1991. Two volumes, quarto. Volume 1: hardcover, with illustrated boards; 326pp. Volume 2: hardcover, full cloth with upper board titles; 322pp. with many colour and monochrome illustrations. Mild wear: Volume 1 - boards a little rubbed; some spotting to the text block edges; no dustwrapper; Volume 2 - somewhat shaken; spine heel softened; boards rubbed and spine spotted; some corner-bumping; dustwrapper rubbed and scuffed with edgewear and sunning along the spine panel. Very good in a well rubbed, illustrated slipcase with some surface tears. Click here to order $80

85104 Takama, Shinji (illus.) Bamboo of Japan Splendour in Four Seasons Graphic-sha Publishing, Tokyo, 1986. Square quarto softcover; 96pp., colour illustrations. Inscription to owner. Minor wear; lightly spotted cover spine with a few random spots on front; mild scuffing to dustwrapper with minimal wear to edges. Very good to near fine otherwise. Gathers photographs of bamboo forests and groves, bamboo shoots, leaves, blossoms, and roots, and gardens, mountains, and wildflowers. Click here to order $18

210145 Turrill, W.B. (James Fisher, et al., eds.; John Markham, et al., illus.; Jacket designed by Clifford & Rosemary Ellis) British Plant Life - The New Naturalist series, no.10 Collins, London, 1948. Octavo; hardcover, full cloth with gilt spine titles; 315pp., with 48pp. of colour plates, 24pp. of monochrome plates and many maps. Mild wear; shaken and rolled; spine sunned and extremities softened; toning to the text block edges; light offset to the endpapers; previous owner's name in ink to the flyleaf. Dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn; spine panel sunned and extremities chipped with some associated creasing (no loss of text or images); light chipping to the flap-turns; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $30

42704 Vellacott, Helen (ed.) Some Recollections of a Happy Life Marianne North in Australia & New Zealand Edward Arnold, Melbourne Vic., 1986. Hardcover, small quarto; grey board with white spine titling and pink endpapers; 128pp., monochrome and some colour illustrations. Minor wear only; near fine in like dustwrapper. Key plan of Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew laid in. Marianne North was an unmarried lady of independent means born into a highly literate and artistic environment. She became an intrepid traveller, an outstanding botanical artist and an illuminating writer. Using North's two volume journal, Helen Vellacott has added fascinating biographical sketches of the characters described there with additional notes on the places she visited. Full colour reproductions of her exquisite paintings of antipodean flora and fauna with line engravings and contemporary photographs. Click here to order $25

210092 Walpole, Josephine A History and Dictionary of British Flower Painters 1650-1950 Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge Suffolk UK, 2006. Quarto hardcover; blue boards with gilt upper board and spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 236pp., colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; board corners bumped; page edges mildly toned. Illustrated dustwrapper with a few superficial scratches and mild wear to edges (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good to near fine. British flower painting has its own unique, if relatively recent, history, but it can only be judged in the light of the wider history of the subject and by comparison with other, particularly European, countries. "British Flower Painters" opens with an illustrated history giving a brief introduction to floral art worldwide before concentrating on British flower painting in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The Dictionary gives the biographical details of nearly one thousand British flower painters from 1650 to 1950 including their specialities, awards, exhibitions and bibliographic details. Click here to order $40

210108 White, Rev. Gilbert (E.T. Bennett & James Edmund Harting, eds.; Thomas Bewick, et al., illus.) The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in the County of Southampton - Stereotyped edition Swan Sonnenschien & Co. Ltd., London, nd. (1874). Octavo; hardcover, upper board ruled in blind, with gilt spine titles and rules; 568pp., with many monochrome illustrations and decorations. Moderate wear; a touch shaken; spine extremities softened; some corner-bumping; text block edges lightly toned with some spotting and top edge dusted; heavy offset to the endpapers. No dustwrapper. Very good. Click here to order $60