Planting the World: Joseph Banks and his Collectors: An Adventurous History of Botany

‘Based on meticulous research in original sources … Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was … Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated’  
Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books

A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting – centred at Kew Gardens and driven by Joseph Banks – transformed the earth.

Botany was the darling and the powerhouse of the eighteenth century. As European ships ventured across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, discovery bloomed. Bounties of new plants were brought back, and their arrival meant much more than improved flowerbeds – it offered a new scientific frontier that would transform Europe’s industry, medicine, eating and drinking habits, and even fashion.