Trees

We thought we ought to take one of the books being sold off at Wisley.

We were tempted by a near hundred year old book about the rhododendrons of Upper Burma, but were put off by it being £30.

So we settled for a book about the trees of what used, in the days of empire, to be the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which I now know to be the size of western Europe, with a lot of it being high plateau, over 5,000 feet. What is now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

A book which is largely the work of various members of the Coates Palgrave family, was published in 1956 and was once the property of the Lusaka Boys' School.

The tone of the book would not do now with its talk of natives and witch doctors (who used some of the fruits illustrated for their potions). I suppose these last would now be called traditional healers. We are also given a dozen or more different native names for each of the 100 or so trees featured, roughly corresponding to the various areas of the federation. But that said, I got the impression that the authorial family had a deep love of their adopted country and the people that lived in it.

This first edition of  'The Trees of Central Africa', in reasonable condition but with damaged binding, was sold to me for a fiver, while Waterstones offer me a new second edition (probably much smaller in size than the original) of the sister publication 'The Trees of Southern Africa' for £30 - with this price also reflecting the huge reduction in the cost of colour printing since the 1950's. While Abebooks has copies of this actual book on offer at more than £150.

Are these Palgraves anything to do with the ones mixed up with MacMillans of reference 2? Given the quote: 'Palgrave, Macmillan's global academic publishing brand launched in 2000 ... The name Palgrave is derived from the Palgrave family, who had a long association with publishing and with the highest levels of achievement in humanities and the social sciences. The name changed to Palgrave Macmillan in 2002, fully representing the rich heritage of the company', it seems quite likely.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Coates_Palgrave.

Reference 2: http://www.palgrave.com/gp/.

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