I must say that I'm suspicious of any author who styles herself as a Duchess That seems to be totally irrelevant to the authorship of this book. But Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, as she liked to be known, certainly had some significant writing skills and experience behind her as a journalist. (And she married a Scottish Duke (among others) ...hence the title). The second author sounds suitably academic to have contributed in a major way to this publication.....a Geology major working on the Joseph Banks Archive Project at the Natural history Museum in London. Anyway, my suspicions, aside the two of them have done a reasonable job of putting some history behind the collection and naming of the Australia flora by Europeans. And one thing stands out: the British were very slack in engaging with the flora of Australia in any systematic way. the French had published a sizeable volume about Australian plants in 1804 by Labillardiere but the British had nothing even comparable until George Bentham published Flora Australiensis in the 1870's. (By this time my own ancestors were well established in Australia).
The book is titled "the Flower Chain" and is written as if all the small contributions added together to initially establish a chain of linkages with Europe and eventually a whole interlinked network. Some characters of particular significance are Joseph Banks. Despite his reputation as a bit of a dilettante he really seems to have been a major force behind much of the systemic collection and knowledge about Australian (and other ) plants. I was also impressed with Bank's role in having Ferdinand Bauer (artist) and Robert Brown (botanist and discoverer of Brownian motion) as part of the complement of people travelling with Flinders on the Investigator. Both pretty impressive people and great contributors. Ferdinand Bauer was amazing. He took countless sketches and noted the colouration against his set of 999 "standard colours" so he could later paint the subject accurately. And he did it with astonishing accuracy....even where colours merge fro one into another. (See the publication "Painting by Numbers").
Lots of interesting illustrations and lots of interesting history. (I didn't know that William Dampier was one of the first significant collectors of plants from North Western Australia. Also the sheer difficulty of keeping plants alive when they were subject to salt spray and scorching heat etc on the long voyages back to Europe). Some interesting stuff about the important role the Empress Josephine played with her garden at Malmaison in introducing and reproducing plants in Europe. She also employed the illustrator Redoute ...I saw his famous rose paintings in Japan. He was a very good painter....and obviously prolific.
In some ways, it's a bit disjointed as a narrative. But that kind of comes with the reality of the growth in knowledge about Australian Flora. (Generally ignored by governors in the colony who were most concerned with survival and didn't really see the native plants as offering anything of value).
Four stars from me. ( )