Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants - Tapa dura

Enraptured, visionary, witty and erudite. . . . As Mabey points out, these plants. . . deserve a measure of respect. --Sunday Telegraph

Mabey writes about weeds with the confident affection of someone discussing old friends. . . . [A] celebration of the vexed coupling between mankind and plantlife. --The Observer

Refreshing, droll, politically alert, occasionally self-mocking, he has the enviable ability both to write historical overview and also to slip into the woods like a dryad, bringing us back to the trees themselves, their colours and lights and textures. --The Guardian

Mabey has the heart of a Romantic poet, kept in order by a botanist s learning and an archivist s diligence. --The Observer

Mabey s writing is as brilliant in its minutely observed detail as in its broad sweeps. --Financial Times

Mabey is to botany what Elizabeth David is to cookery - a lyrical inspirer of enthusiasm and interest. --Daily Mail (London)

A profound and sympathetic meditation on weeds. . . . Illuminating. . . . Mabey is as well versed in the literature of weeds as in the botany, richly weaving his own observations with the words of others: Shakespeare on nettles; Ruskin on poppies; Thoreau on brambles. --Sunday Times (London)

Like Seamus Heaney, [he] is one of those writers whose language is pressed very close to the world. --Scotland on Sunday

Richard Mabey is a man for all seasons... and every kind of landscape. --Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate of the UK

Mabey [is] the eminence grise of contemporary nature writing. . . . In "Weeds", he has written a memorable hymn to the marginal. --The Guardian