Thomas Pakenham's beautifully illustrated, bestselling book of tree portraits.

Acclaimed historian and bestselling author Thomas Pakenham shares his profound love of trees and reverence for nature, rooted in the family estate of Tullynally in Ireland.

For centuries, English country gentlemen had collected exotic pictures for their saloons and rare books for their libraries. By the end of the seventeenth century, they had begun to collect trees. Within the space of a few years, hundreds of new specimen trees enriched the British landscape, and demand was high for the most splendid imports: maples and tulip trees from the American colonies, cypresses and cedars from Europe and Lebanon, and oriental plane from Greece and Turkey, with its romantic associations with Plato's Academy. How did these extraordinary trees make their way to the...