Talking Plants

Advance copies of my new book, Three Worlds Oak , can now be ordered through the publisher in the UK and Europe ( Reaktion Books ) and its distributor in the USA ( University of Chicago Press ). I don't have a link yet for Australia but it will be distributed here by New South Books (Reaktion Books will also ship overseas). As to whether it is 'the first memoir dedicated to a plant genus' as stated on the University of Chicago Press site, or indeed t he first memoir of a genus , as I've described it to some, that's for you to decide. The synopsis is as follows: A dying hybrid oak in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens sets off on an imaginative search for its parents, and in doing so reveals the extraordinary diversity of the genus Quercus . From the Himalaya to Mexico, from knee-high scrub to rainforest giants, more than four hundred species of oak shape landscapes, cultures and histories. Their leaves can blaze red and gold, acorns can be the size of a hand, and wh...