GLADIOLUS IN TROPICAL AFRICA

First Edition: 321 pages, 41 colour plates from photographs, 61 line drawings and 85 distribution maps, brown cloth, a fine copy in the dust jacket.

Editor's note: 'Gladiolus is one of the largest genera of the horticulturally important plant family Iridaceae. Despite the horticultural importance of Gladiolus, the species in tropical Africa have received little attention and have remained poorly known until now. This book is a comprehensive, well-illustrated account of the 82 species—one-third of the species in the genus—that occur in tropical Africa. Of these 82 species, 26 have been described as new to science and named by the author.

‘Among the introductory chapters of the book is an account of the development of the garden gladiolus. The characteristics of only a few species have been used to yield the array of existing cultivars through hybridization. The illustrations and descriptions in Gladiolus in Tropical Africa reveal that there is much more variation that could be exploited horticulturally to increase the diversity of garden and greenhouse gladiolus'