This book successfully combines a most enjoyable and detailed account of the well-known author's many journeys through China. First and foremost, Travels in China provides a practical assessment of the plants that are either of ornamental merit or botanical interest to gardeners in the West. Roy Lancaster follows in the footsteps of the great Victorian plant hunters and describes, in this, his magnus opus, some 1,000 different plants in their natural habitat. He has provided an eminently readable account of a fascinating country, its people, and the plants which have done so much to enrich the gardens of Europe and North America. With a newly revised text and hundreds of Lancaster's own attractive and colorful photographs, many of them new to this edition, are interspersed with fascinating descriptions and anecdotes from his travels. This is a book about plants from a country so rich in variety that there are 50% more species on one mountain in China than in the whole of the British Isles. Indeed, the wide range of climatic conditions in a country as vast as China makes this book relevant to all gardeners, be they from Norway or Spain, the United Kingdom or Canada. AUTHOR: Roy Lancaster has had a long and distinguished career as a plantsman. A schoolboy interest in the flora of the district led to his first job in the Bolton Parks Department; and his subsequent spell with the army in Malaya resulted in a collection of over 1,000 plant specimens from the tropical rainforest made for, among other institutions, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the British Museum. SELLING POINTS: A long-awaited new edition of a much sought-after book, with newly revised text and many new color pictures A fascinating account of the enormous variety of Chinese plants and their application to Western gardens Some 1,000 plants are described in their natural habitats REVIEWS: “It is a treasury of plants and people and places and all keen plantsmen will want to add it to their collection” – Kew Magazine 800 col. & 70 b/w illustrations