Trees of Southern Africa by Palmer, Eve and Nora Pitman

Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1972- 73. Special edition limited to 200 numbered copies, of which this is No. 99, and signed by Eve Palmer. In three volumes (xv, pp. 1-703, index; pp. 704- 1497, index; pp. 1499- 2235, index etc.), tall quarto (c. 22 cm x 28 cm), bound in brown quarter leather and marbled paper, pale green dust jackets (lightly faded and one dust jacket with a 3 cm closed tear, two tips slightly abraded). As the extended title says, this field study and research project ‘covering all known indigenous species in the Republic of South Africa, Southwest Africa, Botswana, Lesotho & Swaziland’ is replete with photographs, largely by Palmer, and the ‘meticulous, accurate, and beautiful’ drawings of Nora Pitman. Travelling into virtually every corner of Southern Africa, covering perhaps 100,000 miles in the course of the investigation, Palmer has incorporated a ‘vast store of historical, geographical, medicinal, nutritional, [and] agricultural’ information in these three volumes. Enhanced by full-page colour photographs by Geoffrey Jenkins, this work is as beautiful as it is comprehensive-- as will become evident when its next owner removes the dust jackets and lets the bindings show. No. 99 of an edition of 200 copies.