Adrian Whiteley

I spent 16 years as a botanist at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Garden at Wisley, Surrey, UK, answering plant-related questions from the public. I had to trawl for hours through a wide range of books and other sources to find the kind of information available here at the click of a mouse.

To have gathered so many facts and figures together is a huge achievement which I am sure will be greatly appreciated by everyone, from students and school children to quiz setters, librarians, crossword fanatics and gardeners - in fact anyone with an interest in plants and their links with people and the planet.

Mike Park

As a specialist bookseller I am aware of the constant demand for books which deal with plants in the arts, in literature, in cookery and herbalism, medicine and pharmacy - the huge spread of man/plant inter-relationships.
We were once privileged to deal with the library of Anthony Huxley - a huge collection of nearly eight thousand volumes. And if there was one thread which linked his interests, it was the effect of man on plants and of plants on man. How impressed he would have been with Sue Eland’s Plant Biographies? And how much fun, knowledge and information he would have gleaned from it?
This store-house of botanical and horticultural facts, continuously updated, a labour of love if ever there was one, is now available to everyone. I heartily recommend it. But I seriously worry that you may never need to buy a book again!

Mike Park Ltd
351 Sutton Common Road
Sutton
Surrey
SM3 9HZ
U.K.
Tel : 020 8641 7796
Fax : 020 8641 3330
e-mail : mikeparkbooks@aol.com

Francesca Greenoak

Plant Biographies is the result of many years painstaking work by Sue Eland who has produced a work of such dimension that it requires a modern technology to do justice to it. Electronic publishing means that it can be published in full. It also simplifies access and cross-referencing. Any future updating will be able to be carried out quickly and comprehensively.

The author has researched and pulled together a vast body of information about plants drawing on a large number of sources. Having so much data available provides a good basis for study and comparison and will be a useful reference, and a starting point for further study for many grateful users.

Francesca Greenoak
Reviews Editor,
Museum of Garden History Journal
4 Wood Row
Wigginton
Tring
Hertfordshire HP23 6HS
francesca@fgreenoak.com