Seeds of Adventure - In Search of Plants - Beau Livre

This book tells the story of extensive travels made by Peter Cox and Peter Hutchison in search of hardy plants. These two intrepid explorers describe sixteen journeys - often arduous, sometimes dangerous and occasionally funny - that resulted in a host of seeds worth treasuring and propagating from among the wild flowers of the Himalaya and the high peaks of western China and Turkey. On nearly every expedition they explored territory where no western plant hunters had been since such great explorers as Frank Kingdon Ward, and some of the trails they followed were so remote and rough that they had never before been botanised.
Every trip was an adventure, and every adventure bore the seeds of success. Where the Himalayan range meets the gorge country of south-west China lies the richest temperate flora in the world. Here the plant life can mate, mutate and migrate in an evolutionary stew that challenges the botanist to classify it. With their Chinese and Indian colleagues, the Peters introduced many plants, especially rhododendrons, new or lost to cultivation, often saving them from extinction, many of which can be grown outside in the temperate regions of Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the United States of America.
Seeds of Adventure captures the thrill experienced by two great friends as they find special or new plants. It also records the difficult times shared while travelling. Lavishly illustrated with more than 700 photographs of the mountain flora, set among snowy peaks and colourful tribes, this is a book for plant enthusiasts as well as lovers of armchair travel.