The first thing that strikes you on picking up this book is that it is heavy. That’s what 400 pages of high quality paper feel like. On those 400 pages are high quality images and high quality words from an author who knows how to write and who knows his subject very well.
What more is there to say? Peter Marren has written a couple of other books about rare plants – one of which describes the UK’s rare plants and the other his search for those he hadn’t already seen in 2018 – see my review. Here we are taken through a wide range of subjects from the history of plant-finding to how a species ends up as being rare, from endemism to hybrids, from listing to conservation, from trees to seaweeds and bryophytes. All are clearly told and well explained by an acknowledged expert who always seems comfortable in his expertise and wears it lightly and with twinkles of humour.
I’m not a botanist but I found this book fascinating. I am a conservationist and I found the last chapter of the book fascinating too. I can remember the UK Biodiversity Action Plan process and indeed, with a bunch of mates across other organisations, had quite a lot to do with setting it up almost against the wishes of the statutory conservation sector at the time. It got off to a very promising start but foundered eventually as devolution came into play (a good thing for many reasons but a short-term disruption to nature conservation) and the process became over-complicated by statutory agencies. I was reminded of some of that by the last chapter in this book as well as of other periods of false hope for rapid progress. Peter Marren is very wise, presumably through a combination of starting off life as a clever person and having, but importantly, learning from, a great deal of experience.
It’s not, by any means, all gloom: we haven’t lost a native flowering plant species for 45 years and there is plenty to learn from our successes.
This is a great read for botanists and non-botanists alike.
The Bloomsbury British Wildlife Collection feels rather like a parallel universe to Collins’s New Naturalists. This work, and some of the others from the Bloomsbury stable, are miles better than the average recent New Naturalist and at least on a par with many of the best.
The cover? Attractive, unfussy and relevant (and not covered in useless quotes)(and I see it is by Carry Akroyd so no wonder I like it!). I’d give it 9/10.
Rare Plants by Peter Marren is published by Bloomsbury.
Buy this book direct from Blackwell’s – a proper bookshop (and I’ll get a little bit of money from them).
There are a few nature/conservation writers I think are equal to Peter Marren, but none that surpasses him, I’ve currently got those two previous rare plant books on my shelves waiting to be read so this will be a third. He is incredibly insightful I find, and would dearly love to know exactly why he has such strong reservations about the Woodland Trust. I’ve been a member of the WT for twenty years and it’s been very supportive of some of the projects I’ve been involved. Yet I have very strong feelings of frustration and general misgiving too, some such as very questionable sponsorship/corporate deals I can put my finger on, but others I can’t and the WT is or should be one of the big players in UK conservation.
In his book ‘Conservation’ he questioned the banality of many urban tree planting schemes – including the one in my home town Falkirk – suggesting they were really about future hardwood production rather than helping wildlife. It’s always nice when someone somewhere finally says the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. His observations and opinions really should get a bigger platform, they’re very valuable.