Atlas of Botany

Plants first emerged on a very different looking Earth 500 million years ago. As land masses moved, they were brought together in fierce competition with one another, or separated to continue their lives in very different conditions. On this evolutionary journey, plants developed ingenious strategies to disperse and extend their range, and increase their diversity.

Plants populate almost every part of Earth’s land surface – from tropical zones to cracks in city pavements – and have fundamentally shaped the natural regions of our planet. In a work of breathtaking narrative scope and visual mastery, Atlas of Botany maps the changing conditions and continents of the prehistoric world and the biomes of the modern one. Complex biology is transformed into clear, engaging text that explores how plants have overcome the challenges of survival, and describes the numerous ways in which they have interacted with pollinators and people along the way.