Winner of the 2022 Society of Economic Botany's Daniel F. Austin AwardA Cultural History of Plantspresents a global exploration of how plants have shaped human culture. Covering the last 12,000 years, it is the definitive history of how we have cultivated, traded, classified, and altered plants and how, in turn, plants have influenced our ideas of luxury and wealth, health and well-being, art and architecture. Chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The themes (and chapter titles) are: Plants as Staple Foods; Plants as Luxury Foods; Trade and Exploration; Plant Technology and Science; Plants and Medicine; Plants in Culture; Plants as Natural Ornaments; The Representation of Plants. The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (10,000 BCE to 500 CE); 2 - Post-Classical Era (500 to 1400); 3 - Early Modern Era (1400 to 1650); 4 - the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1650 to 1800); 5 - the Nineteenth Century(1800 to 1920); 6 - Modern Era (1920 to the present). The page extent for the pack is 1744pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index.The Cultural Histories SeriesA Cultural History of Plantsis part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).Volume 1: A Cultural History of Plants in AntiquityEdited byAnnette Giesecke, University of Delaware, USASeries Preface List of Illustrations Introduction: Plants and Culture in Antiquity,Annette Giesecke1. Plants as Staple Foods,Jennifer Ramsay, Sarah Walshaw, and Karla Hansen-Speer2. Plants as Luxury Foods: Sweet Herbs for Curry,Andrew Dalby3. Trade & Exploration,Laurence M.V. Totelin4. Plant Technology & Science,Patrick Hunt5. Plants & Medicine,Alain Touwaide6. Plants in Culture: Botanic Symbols in Daily Life and Literature,Annette Giesecke and Mechthild Siede7. Plants as Natural Ornaments,Kaja Tally-Schumacher8. The Representation of Plants,Allison Thomason, Joanna Day, and Annette GieseckeEndnotes Abbreviations Bibliography Notes on Contributors IndexVolume 2: A Cultural History of Plants in the Post-Classical EraEdited byAlain Touwaide, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington, DC, USASeries Preface List of Figures Introduction,Alain Touwaide1. Plants as Staple Foods,Melitta Weiss Adamson2. Plants as Luxury Foods,Alain Touwaide3. Trade and Exploration,Federica Rotelli4. Plant Technology and Science: Perception and use of plants in China,Huaiyu Chen5. Plants and Medicine, Iolanda Ventura, Tony Hunt,Johannes Gottfried Mayer6. Plants in Culture,Divya Kumar-Dumas7. Plants as Natural Ornaments. Pre-modern Iranian and Eastern-Islamic Lands,Yves Porter8. The Representations of Plants: Mediators of Body and Soul,Sarah KyleEndnotes Bibliography Notes on Contributors IndexVolume 3: A Cultural History of Plants in the Early Modern EraEdited byAndrew Dalby, independent scholar, France & Annette Giesecke, University of Delaware, USASeries Preface List of Figures Editors' Note Introduction: "I am sorry to say that I do not recognise them",Andrew Dalby and Annette Giesecke1. Plants as Staple Foods: Europe in the Post-Classical Era,Malcolm Thick2. Plants as Luxury Foods: "And they germinated very well",Andrew Dalby3. Trade and Exploration: Plant Hunting 1450-1650,David Marsh4. Plant Technology and Science: Frondi tenere e belle,Ingrid D. Rowland5. Plants and Medicine,Florike Egmond6. Plants in Culture,Luke Morgan and Elizabeth Hyde7. Plants as Natural Ornaments,Jill Francis8. The Representation of Plants: More than Just a Pretty Face?,Gillian RileyNotes Bibliography Notes on Contributors IndexVolume 4: A Cultural History of Plants in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth CenturiesEdited byJennifer Milam, University of Newcastle, AustraliaSeries Preface List of Illustrations Introduction: Plants and Culture during the Enlightenment,Jennifer Milam and Garritt Van Dyk1. Plants as Staple Foods,Jane Levi2. Plants as Luxury Foods,Garritt Van Dyk3. Trade & Exploration,Sarah Easterby-Smith4. Plant Technology & Science,Alexandra Cook5. Plants & Medicine,Clare Griffin6. Plants in Culture,Stephen Bending7. Plants as Natural Ornament,Mark Laird8. The Representation of Plants,Ekaterina Heath and Jennifer MilamNotes Bibliography Notes on ContributorsVolume 5: A Cultural History of Plants in the Nineteenth CenturyEdited byDavid Mabberley, University of Oxford, UKSeries Preface List of Figures Introduction,David Mabberley1. Plants as Staple Foods,Claudia Ciotir2. Plants as Luxury Foods,Patrick Hunt3. Trade and Exploration,Mark Nesbitt4. Plant Technology and Science,Anne Osbourn5. Plants and Medicine,Monique Simmonds6. Plants in Culture,Roy Vickery7. Plants as Natural Ornaments,Clemens Alexander Wimmer8. The Representation of Plants,H. Walter LackNotes Bibliography Notes on Contributors IndexVolume 6: A Cultural History of Plants in the Modern EraEdited byStephen Forbes, Adelaide Botanic Gardens, AustraliaSeries Preface List of Illustrations Introduction: Plants and Culture,Stephen Forbes1. Plants as Staple Foods: Feast and Famine in Global Food Systems,Derek Byerlee2. Plants as Luxury Foods: Affordability in an Environmentally Uncertain Future,Frederica Bowcutt3. Trade and Exploration: The Impact on Plant Diversity,Sara Oldfield4. Plant Technology and Science: Advances in Crop Improvement,Peter Langridge and Geoff Fincher5. Plants and Medicine: From Imperial Divergence to Global Convergence,Jean-Paul Gaudillière6. Plants in Culture,Mark Tredinnick and Stephen Forbes7. Plants as Natural Ornaments,Kate Cullity, Stephen Forbes, Jen Lynch & Mike Maunder8. The Representation of Plants,Geoff BilEndnotes Bibliography Notes on Contributors IndexAnnette Giesecke is the Elias Ahuja Professor of Classics in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Delaware, USA. She is author of Classical Mythology A to Z (2020), The Mythology of Plants: botanical lore from Ancient Greece and Rome (2014), and The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome (2007); and co-author of The Good Gardener? Nature, Humanity, and the Garden (2015) and Earth Perfect? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden (2012). She is co-General Editor of the 6 volume series A Cultural History of Plants (Bloomsbury, 2021), of which she is editor of the volume A Cultural History of Plants in Antiquity.

David Mabberleyis a botanist and author based in Australia. He is Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK; Emeritus Professor, University of Leiden, The Netherlands; and Adjunct Professor, Macquarie University, Australia. He has written many books on botanical art and science, the best known of which isMabberley's Plant-book: A Portable Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses(Ed. IV, 2017).He has carried out extensive botanical fieldwork across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and South America. He has been President of both the Society for the History of Natural History and the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, and was Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.