The European Garden Flora 5 Volume Hardback Set (Hardcover)

The European Garden Flora is the definitive manual for the accurate identification of cultivated ornamental flowering plants. Designed to meet the highest scientific standards, the vocabulary has nevertheless been kept as uncomplicated as possible so that the work is fully accessible to the informed gardener as well as the professional botanist. Comprehensive keys are provided at the level of family, genus and species and line diagrams are included to illustrate the important diagnostic features of critical taxa. Reference is made to useful illustrations and taxonomic accounts and a small amount of guidance on cultivation is provided for many genera. This new edition has been thoroughly reorganised and revised, bringing it into line with modern taxonomic knowledge. Although European in name, the Flora covers plants cultivated in most areas of the United States and Canada as well as in non-tropical parts of Asia and Australasia.

James Cullen has been a professional plant taxonomist for over 50 years, working particularly on the classification and identification of plants in cultivation (especially Rhododendron) at Liverpool and Edinburgh Universities, at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, and in Cambridge. With the late Dr S. M. Walters, he was the initiator of the first edition of The European Garden Flora and is responsible for two spin-offs, The Orchid Book (1992) and Manual of North European Garden Plants (2001).

Sabina Knees is a taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and although now working on plants of the Middle East, particularly the flora of the Arabian Peninsula and Socotra, she spent over 20 years working as a horticultural taxonomist for the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and is a founder member of the Horticultural Taxonomy Group (HORTAX). She was editor of The New Plantsman for seven years and worked initially as a research associate and then as a member of the editorial committee on the first edition of The European Garden Flora.

Suzanne Cubey has worked at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (RBGE) since 1987, originally as a researcher, and then later becoming the Assistant Secretary on the Editorial Board for the first edition of The European Garden Flora. Since 2005 her main role has been as Assistant Herbarium Curator with particular responsibility for the cultivated plants, where she curates the cultivated specimens in the RBGE herbarium and manages the vouchering of research material from the living collections.