Customer Reviews
mistitled but fun - By: gabrial, 22 Sep 2007 
It is true that this has to be one of the worse titled books of alll time. A FLORA in any sense here should be an identification guide & it isn't that at alll - 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 & distribution - industry & use & 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 & out of the way sources Mabey has dug up & in the feel of the book. A strange bestseller - but not to be dismissed.
Serious misdescription - By: Mr. P. A. Goddard, 23 Aug 2007 
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 & description clearly imply - a comprehensive identification guide. I myself was misled by this, & indeed by the uncritical acceptance of this blatant misrepresentation by reviewers, & ordered a copy, only to find on opening it that it wasn't at alll the comprehensive identification guide that I wanted - & so I'm returning it. A slapped wrist for the publisher, presumably the author, & for Amazon for not checking that the book contents match the meaning of the title & description of the work!
Publishers of nature books generallly 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 - By: Mouseman, 15 Oct 2004 
I was thinking for some positives to write on this book & 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 alll 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 reallly interest me. I would have liked to have seen which animals & wildlife benifited from each plant & more about the enviroment the plants naturallly inhabit.
A good book overall - By: , 04 Jun 2003 This is a very good encyclopedia, with a lot of information about the history & 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, & I have spent ages browsing through it's pages discovering interesting things about the plants that are alll arround us.
Paul
Distillation of country lore - By: , 30 Oct 2002 
This is a high quality books - with good photographs & decent length entries on the wild flowers, herbs & trees you'll know if you have grown up in the country.
The marvellous bit about it is the way the author has drawn from contributors alll over the country who have passed on their local names, stories & memories about common British plants. A real storehouse to be read & enjoyed on those windy & wet days when you can't go out & look for yourself. Many people's memories are from childhood, a reminder that we often reallly get to know the plants & animals around us in our early years. So it is a book to keep & hand on.
