Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Root and Branch October 12, 2008
J. J. O'neill (Warrington UK)
I recall hearing Richard Mabey discussing this book on a radio show, before it was published and thinking its premise: collecting contibutors personal experiences of British plant life, seemed rather uninspired. Surely this kind of thing has been done to death? Nature magazine columns have been filled for years with people writing accounts of things they have seen in the British countryside.
When it was published, I was further put off by the high price of the book.
I was completely wrong on both counts, the price, when the size, scope and quality of the book are considered, seems more than reasonable. As to the premise of the work, Richard Mabey, a genius writer in my opinion, pulls all the various accounts from amateur contributors together into a cohesive and coherent whole, that manages to maintain the same well mannered and good humoured tone throughout its long length.
It is possible to read the book piecemeal, picking out species that interest you specially , but I feel reading it from cover to cover best allows the reader to appreciate what the author has achieved.
This is not an identification guide, although the photographs are of top quality, and the amount of space devoted to each species varies wildly, but the "Flora" succeeds in its aim to br a folk history rather than purely a Natural History work.
Beware of books that may seem to continue this work, e.g."Fauna Britannica", which do not, in fact, have much in common with this fine volume.
 mistitled but fun September 22, 2007
gabrial (oxford)
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
It is true that this has to be one of the worse titled books of all time. A FLORA in any sense here should be an identification guide and it isn't that at all - it is a personal exploration of various plants concentrating not necessarily on the most important but on those for which the author has an affection for or simply information on. The main interests are folklore and distribution - industry and use and even literature get short shrift, oddly. It is true too that plant introductions are widely covered, but the distinction in terms of salience would be rather misleading (do we miss out horse-chstnut?...). The joy of this book which frankly does NOT look as though it was twenty years (flap) in the making is the writing and out of the way sources Mabey has dug up and in the feel of the book. A strange bestseller - but not to be dismissed.
 Serious misdescription August 23, 2007
Mr. P. A. Goddard (Exeter, UK)
7 out of 16 found this review helpful
Flora Britannica may be a fine book for what it is, as an essay or encyclopedia about British plants, but it is NOT what the title and description clearly imply - a comprehensive identification guide. I myself was misled by this, and indeed by the uncritical acceptance of this blatant misrepresentation by reviewers, and ordered a copy, only to find on opening it that it wasn't at all the comprehensive identification guide that I wanted - and so I'm returning it. A slapped wrist for the publisher, presumably the author, and for Amazon for not checking that the book contents match the meaning of the title and description of the work!
Publishers of nature books generally are being given far too much licence to misrepresent certain books in such a way - such as the Collins "Complete" guides, some of which cannot possibly be anything like complete.
 Not for the serious horticulturist October 15, 2004
Mouseman (England)
49 out of 123 found this review helpful
I was thinking for some positives to write on this book and not much came to mind. It is a perfectly fine book. However the name flora brittanica indicates the plants in this book ought to be indiginous to this land but a great number of them are not. So the author spends time telling us about plants that have been brought over here in the last 100 - 200 years which is of no interest to anyone who is interested in FLORA BRITTANICA. Consequently what could have been a book containing a greater source of information on the fewer number of truly native species becomes a book with little information on a grater number of introduced species. Some of our native species aren't even worthy of a photograph where as japanese knotweed gets 2 photographs all because some idiot brought the wretched plant over here a few hundred years ago because he thought it was decorative. The explanation that goes with (most) the plants is largely centered around ancient beliefs about its uses. Which is o.k to the casual reader but doesn't really interest me. I would have liked to have seen which animals and wildlife benifited from each plant and more about the enviroment the plants naturally inhabit.
A good book overall June 4, 2003
53 out of 58 found this review helpful
This is a very good encyclopedia, with a lot of information about the history and uses of the various plants found in Britain. My only criticism is that the pictures show the plants in their natural habitat rather than close up. This means it is sometimes difficult to identify the plant from the picture. After saying that, this book is not a hady field guide that you would carry round anyway. It being 400+ pages.
As a home fererence work, I can reccomend it, and I have spent ages browsing through it's pages discovering interesting things about the plants that are all arround us. Paul
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