Remarkable Trees of the World [antikvár]

1 , f ' t .1 ¦ I I-;. < ' -- • 6 remarkable trees of the world I introduction Introduction Another Sixty Six yjvARS acq I wrote Meetings with Reinarkcjhle Trees. My friends, who knew my hooks on African history, expressed mild surprise. At the time it appeared, even to my publishers, n fanciful idea for me to write a book about sixty individual trees, or groups of trees. But it seemed to strike a chord with the public. People wrote to tell me that they secretly hugged trees but had been too embarrassed to admit it. Others said they had never seen much point in trees, but now they looked at them with new eyes. A South African told me 1 was a hero in his family. 'You see, our mother's 95, half blind and she's lost her marbles. She thinks your book's absolutely wonderful.' 1 hope all this did not go to my head. I chose the first sixty trees arbitrarily, perhaps even whimsically. There were only three principles. Each tree must be alive (or dead on its feet) in Britain or Ireland. It must have a strong personality, in fact so strong that my wife (not a fanatical admirer of trees herself) will cry 'Wow' when we walk together into its presence. And it must have a good face, meaning that it presents a face to my camera which will make a portrait. I have now chosen another sixty trees on the same principles, with one difference. These trees, or groups of trees, are scattered across the world beyond Britain and Ireland. Recklessly, my publishers have let me make the world into my oyster. And who wouldn't jump at that chance? I have spent four wild years roaming the world, and ransacking it for trees with noble brows and strong personalities. Like the first volume, this new tree book won't help you identify trees, let alone grow them. But I hope it will help you meet some new ones, and you too will cry 'Wow' when you stand in their presence. Sometimes one follows the trail of an ancicnt tree, like a hunter tracking a white rhino through the bush, and finds it already dead. Worse, the trees for which you are yourself responsible, the trees in your own garden, arc maimed or shattered by storms. Ten years ago, at my family's home in Ireland we had a garden and park teeming with 200-year-old beeches. My favourite was a venerable creature with five trunks. It was the star of Meetings with Remarkable Trees-the snow-encrusted giant which featured on the frontispiece, end papers and in the body of the text. As I said then, it was on borrowed time. You can see it in the two photographs above: before and after the Boxing Day storm in the final year of the millennium. It still lies there today in the wind and the rain, its five trunks splayed open like five fingers, a monument rather than a corpse. I haven't Top and above: End oh a KAMILY TREt - BEVORE AND AFTER THE STORM OF December 26,1999 !'age 2, frontispiece: The Montezuma cypress at Tule, Mexico - biggest girthed tree in the world Page 4: 'The Senate' - a c.roup of giant sequoias at Sequoia National Park, California