William A[mbrose]. First Records of British Flowering Plants.

by CLARKE

£200 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

The First Book of Floral Firsts CLARKE, William A[mbrose]. First Records of British Flowering Plants. London: West, Newman Co. 1897. 8vo. Original limp green boards, upper board lettered in gilt; pp. 103, [1]; joints lightly rubbed, some wear to spine ends; nonetheless a very good copy; 54 pp. twentieth-century annotation in blue ink. First edition in book form of this history of floral discovery, with manuscript annotations denoting the locations of over fifty plant discoveries. Most of what we know about the unsung William Ambrose Clark (1841–1911) comes from his obituary in the Journal of Botany by his fellow botanist James Britten. Clarke was a solicitor who retired to Oxford and used the Bodleian Library’s resources to fulfil his bibliographical approach to botanical science. This is his only published work and it shows, Britten comments, views on nomenclature that are ‘sentimental rather than logical’. It is, however, a significant achievement. ‘Until 1897, when William Clarke produced his First Records of British Flowering Plants , there was no publication where one could see the date and source of the discovery of all of the native plants in Britain and Ireland’ (Pearman). Clarke’s assiduous work in listing the first recorded scientific description of each species of the native flora of Britain was initially published in sections in the Journal of Botany between 1892 and 1896. Here it appears complete, expanded, and amended for the first time. This first edition, due

• Binding: Hardcover

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