Search results for ""author sandra knapp""
The Natural History Museum In the Name of Plants: Remarkable plants and the extraordinary people behind their names
The names of plants that are so familiar to us −magnolia, bougainvillea, sequioa − may just be names, but behind the names lie stories of espionage and heroism, rivalry and mystery and inspiration. In the Name of Plants relates the stories of these people and the plants that were named after them. Each chapter tells the story of the person for which each plant is named, many of whom were pioneering explorers, collectors and botanists – such as Alice Eastwood who has the yellow aster, Eastwoodia elegans, named after her. Eastwood explored previously uncharted territories in the 19th century and famously saved the California Academy of Science's priceless plant collection from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Subjects range from Charles Darwin (Darwinia) and legendary French botanist Pierre Magnol (Magnolia), to US founding fathers George Washington (Washingtonia) and Benjamin Franklin (Franklinia). Each entry is accompanied by superb artworks from the Library of the Natural History Museum, as well as photography of specimens and wild plants and the essential taxonomic details and geographic spread for each species.
£18.00
The Natural History Museum Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazon: Footsteps in the Forest
Alfred Russel Wallace is justly famous for his discoveries in Southeast Asia, from where he wrote to Charles Darwin outlining his theory of evolution by natural selection. His career as a tropical naturalist, however, began in the Amazon. Wallace concentrated his collecting on the Rio Negro and the Rio Vaupes and his collections and observations proved of great value to the scientific community in England. On his return home in 1852 disaster struck. The ship on which he was travelling caught fire and all his precious collections were destroyed. As he fled the ship he managed to salvage a small tin box with a few delicate pencil drawings. Wallace's Amazonian adventure is told here, using mainly his own words and illustrated with these delicate drawings. He went on to become one of the defining figures of Victorian biology, and this is the story of his beginning.
£9.04