Daylily - Hemerocallis x hybrida Crimson Pirate

America's Famous and Historic Trees tells the stories of various trees that Meyer and his cohorts rescued or propagated: oftentimes, when trees were going to be cut down, he and his workers headed off the bulldozers, rescuing the tree with their massive tree hoe. Other trees--like the Indian Marker Pecan in southeast Dallas--were propagated before they died. Some of the ancestor trees still stand in their historic places--like Elvis Presley's Pin Oaks on the grounds of Graceland. Chapters here follow the trials and tribulations of specific trees, and end with "how to propagate" instructions for a wide variety of species: sycamore, cottonwood, bur oak, magnolia. This book is not about photographs--what images are included are simply of big trees alongside houses or suburban developments, awkward and misplaced, like an elegant old man in a multiplex. Meyer hopes to inspire his readers to plant and nurture forests that will outlive them, and to rescue trees from the unknown forces of the future by revering their pasts. --Emily White
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2001-04-20)
Price: $30.00

Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? The author, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, has spent six years looking for answers. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behavior, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.

The tulip made great fortunes for people but was responsible for equally spectacular bankruptcies. Millions of aficionados now gaze in awe at the brilliant flower pieces painted in the early seventeenth century by masters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert. But at the time they were painted, these works or art were considered as cheap substitutes for the real flowers. Even Jan van Huysum, the grand master of Dutch flower painting, could rarely command more than 5,000 guilders for a painting. But at auction in Alkmaar, Holland in 1637, a single bulb of the red-and-white tulip "Admiral Liefkens' changed hands for 4,400 guilders.

Roaming through Asia, India, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the author tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took the whole of Western Europe by storm. In the petals of the exquisite English florists' tulips, still exhibited in competition by members of the Wakefield Tulip Society in Yorkshire, runs the blood of flowers first grown by John Evelyn in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, the book also features descriptions of eighty wild-species tulips and several hundred garden varieties. This beautifully produced and irresistible volume will become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift book and a joy to all who possess it.Amazon.com Review: In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than $3.5 million in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anna Pavord's wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers.

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, where she tells of scrambling across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip. The story of the discovery of this tulip leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful, enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the object of affection--in this case, the tulip--from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul in the 18th century to its present cultivation by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way, incredible stories of people's investments in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of a unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colors are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant but produces its gorgeous hues. The tulipomania that gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colors imaginable. Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects. Buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again. --Jerry Brotton
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (1999-01-15)
Price: $40.00