The Art of Plant Evolution

Synopsis
This book was published for the 'art meets science' exhibition of the same name at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 2009/10 to celebrate Kew’s 250th anniversary and Darwin’s bicentenary.

The exhibition (and the book) provides an overview of plant relationships based on contemporary scientific discoveries and DNA test.
  • Both contain 136 botanical paintings from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, by 84 artists, cover 44 orders of plants in 118 families, and a total of 134 species, providing a sweeping overview of the evolution of plants on earth.
  • The paintings display a sampling of the plant world from fungi to daisies, including algae, mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants arranged in the most up to date evolutionary sequence, determined by recent DNA analysis.
  • The text accompany each image of paintings in the exhibition comments on the artist's background, and the artist’s observations in the context of modern plant classification.​
Summary

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED This book emphasises the scientific aspects of botanical art and makes it accessible. It's an excellent book and one which deserves to be on the reference shelves of every serious botanical artist.

It provides all botanical art lovers with a comprehensive education in the botany of plant groups and families alongside numerous excellent examples of botanical art.

Contents cover:
  • Art meets science
  • Natural selection and the origins of species
  • Plant evolutionary relationships and a natural classification
  • How do we know about plant evolutionary relationships? Evidence from fossils; Evidence from DNA sequence data
  • Co-evolution between plants and animals
  • The current classification of major groups of plants
  • The paintings. Taxonomic arrangement of the paintings
  • Fungi and plants without seeds
  • Gymnosperms
  • Basal angiosperms
  • Early diverging eudicots
  • Core eudicots.

Suitable for:
  • emerging and experienced botanical artists and illustrators
  • people who learned their botany some time ago and need to update on recent discoveries
Highlights:
  • complete taxonomic classification of all plants - and paintings
  • painting names are matched to correct botanical names and plant families
  • explanation of the DNA sequencing process as applied to plants
  • short synopsis of the major evolutionary groups
  • book organised according to each main plant group
  • illustrations of examples of 134 species from 116 plant families divided among 44 plant orders
  • work by 84 international artists
  • detailed scientific commentary on individual plants representative of different plants groups and families
  • excellent bibliography and glossary
  • this is a substantial book with excellent production standards - the colour and detailing of the images is first rate
Think again?
  • I'm not sure there's an easy way into botany and the classification of plants. The scientific explanations certainly require focused attention. (However the book is beautiful to look at even if you skip the science bits initially)
  • I wish it had a list of artists as an appendix
I was fortunate to see the exhibition as well - and greatly enjoyed seeing the artwork of the artists include a number - from Japan and Brazil - who were not previously known to me. . See my Exhibition review: The Art of Plant Evolution 
Technical data: 
Authors: W. John Cress and Shirley Sherwood
Publisher: Kew Publishing 
Hardback Date: UK 22nd August 2009; USA - February 15, 2010
320 pages; 292 x 225mm.
Hardcover (with dust jacket): ISBN 9781842464212
Paperback: ISBN 9781842464175
Nominated for Technical category | The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Awards 2010

BUY THIS BOOK (Note a new hardback now costs over £200 as it is out of print as a hardback! However you can buy the paperback new for a lot less.)

Authors:

  • Dr W. John Kress is Curator and Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC . He studied at both Harvard and Duke Universities and his research interests include the systematic biology of Heliconia and other Zingiberales​
  • Dr Shirley Sherwood has been collecting contemporary botanical drawings from around the world since 1990. Her comprehensive collection includes work by artists living in over thirty different countries and documents the emergence of a new wave of botanical painters and the renaissance of their art form and is arguably the most important private collection of twentieth century botanical art in the world.