Concocting a cheerful indifference to extremes of heat and hunger, tropical fever, shipwreck, disappointment or sudden death: the Victorian plant hunter is an almost mythical figure. Now, in Blue Orchid, Big Tree, two best-selling authors explore the dangerous world of William and Thomas Lobb, English brothers born in obscurity who became our greatest plant hunters, and whose precious legacy lives on in our landscape and in our parks and gardens. William Lobb (1809-1864) collected in South America and western North America and Thomas Lobb (1817-1894) traveled through south-east Asia and...