The Private Life of Plants (Inscribed by Author)

ATTENBOROUGH, David. The Private Life of Plants: A Natural History of Plant Behaviour. London: BBC Books, 1995.

Large 4to. Illustrated boards. Unclipped pictorial dust jacket. 320 pp., profusely illustrated throughout in colour. 320pp. First edition. Inscribed by the author on the title page: "To John."

The decision to make a natural history series about plants presented a fundamental problem: plants do not move. Or rather, they do not move on any timescale accessible to the human eye. The Private Life of Plants solved the problem through time-lapse photography of extraordinary precision, revealing the strategies plants employ for survival — for finding light, for attracting pollinators, for dispersing seeds, for competing with their neighbours — as dramatic and purposeful as anything in the animal kingdom. Attenborough had by 1995 presented six major natural history series, and the accumulated experience showed: the writing here is at its most assured, finding precise language for processes that had never been described for a general audience. The result was a series, and a book, that permanently altered the way a generation of viewers understood what a plant was and what it was doing.

Near fine in unclipped dust jacket. Small amount of foxing to upper edge; otherwise clean and bright throughout.

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Catalogue Number: HH000598