The greatest glass house : the rainforests recreated
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The greatest glass house : the rainforests recreated
HMSO, 1990
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Note
At head of title: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Bibliography: p. 208
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This volume tells of Kew's Palm House and its tropical plant collections. The story of this "rainforest in suburban London" explains the history of the greatest glasshouse (the most important glass and iron structure in the world), provides a glimpse into the world of the Victorian gardeners who worked there, and describes its restoration. The author also gives detailed descriptions of the beautiful and fascinating plants grown in the Palm House - from the cycads, the "living fossils" of the plant world, to the economic plants such as bananas, cocoa and rubber and numerous ornamental species. Among them are many endangered rainforest plants, and the importance of the rainforest and the need to conserve it are two of the book's major themes.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Greenery among the iron: the Palm House and its collections - the birth of the Palm House, the growth of the Victorian plant collections, the workday world of the Palm House, the structure of the rainforest and the Palm House plant collections, palms, cycads and pandans, tropical climbers
- yields of the rainforest - fruits, crops, medicines, flowers of the rainforest. Part 2 Restoration and renovation: iron glasshouses - the historical background, the restoration of the 1950s
- the 1980s restoration - surveys and reports, design and specifications for refurbishment, the Marine Display, the restoration of the Palm House 1985-1988, plants on the move.
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