Captivating black-and-white photographs of the world’s most majestic ancient trees. Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs. This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews—some more than a thousand years old—that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called “upside-down trees” because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa. Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.

A spectacular oversize photo book celebrating Africa’s most majestic trees—which are now facing an unprecedented ecological threat. Baobabs are one of Africa’s natural wonders: they can live more than 2,000 years, and their massive, water-storing trunks can grow to more than one hundred feet in circumference. They serve as a renewable source of food, fiber, and fuel, as well as a focus of spiritual life. But now, suddenly, the largest baobabs are dying off , literally collapsing under their own weight. Scientists believe these ancient giants are being dehydrated by drought and higher temperatures, likely the result of climate change. Photographer Beth Moon, already responsible for some of the most indelible images of Africa’s oldest and largest baobabs, has undertaken a new photographic pilgrimage to bear witness to this environmental catastrophe and document the baobabs that still survive. In this oversize volume, Moon presents breathtaking new duotone tree portraits of the baobabs of Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, and Senegal. She recounts her eventful journey to visit these monumental trees in a moving diaristic text studded with color travel photos. This book also includes an essay by Adrian Patrut, leader of a research team that has studied Africa's largest baobabs and alerted the world tot he threat these majestic trees are facing. Baobab is not only a compelling photo book and travel narrative, but also a timely ecological warning.

Photographer Beth Moon revisits the world’s oldest trees in the darkest places on earth, using color photography to capture vibrant nighttime skies. Throughout much of the world, night skies are growing increasingly brighter, but the force that protects the remaining naturally dark sky, unpolluted by artificial light, is the same that saves its ancient trees—isolation. Staking out some of the world’s last dark places, photographer Beth Moon uses a digital camera to reveal constellations, nebulae, and the Milky Way, in rich hues that are often too faint to be seen by the naked eye. As in her acclaimed first volume, Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, these magnificent images encounter great arboreal specimens, including baobabs, olive trees, and redwoods, in such places as South Africa, England, and California. In her artist’s statement, Beth Moon describes the experience of shooting at night in these remote places. An essay by Jana Grcevich, postdoctoral fellow of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, provides the perspective of a scientist racing to study the stars in a world growing increasingly brighter. Clark Strand, the author of Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age, takes a different tack, illuminating the inherent spirituality of trees.

The Oldest Living Things in the World is an epic journey through time and space. Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future.

Celebrates some of the oldest living trees on earth, from the redwoods in California to the banyan trees in China.

A stunning collection of portraits of favourite trees from around Britain by photographer Adrian Houston.---'This is a wonderful book: beautiful and important' - Joanna Lumley'A must-read for all conservationists, environmentalists and nature lovers' - Sir Richard Branson'Adrian's stunning photographs capture the majesty of these iconic trees.' - Geraint Richards, Chair of Action Oak---A Portrait of the Tree is a repository of memories, and a testament to the British landscape. Trees are revealed as religious signifiers, historical landmarks, national emblems.Sparked by a simple question: 'What is your favourite tree?', photographer Adrian Houston discovered a wealth of fascinating stories enmeshed with these giants of the natural world - some of miraculous survival, others of sheltering royalty, or witnessing history, or simply of personal grief and renewal. Adrian photographed each nominated tree looking utterly glorious: spotlit by night, bathed in morning sunshine, wreathed in delicate mist or blazing with autumn colour. From the cedars of Highclere Castle to the plane trees of London, ancient pine woods of the Scottish Highlands to veteran oaks that have stood witness to time; from native stalwarts such as the monumental beech to endangered giant redwoods. This stunning celebration bears witness to the might and majesty of the lungs of the earth - the tree. Includes: Joanna Lumley, Tony Kirkham, Dr George McGavin, Antony Gormley, Jasper Conran, Alice Temperley, Alan Titchmarsh, Sir Richard Carew Pole, the Reverend Lucy Winkett

Thomas Pakenham's beautifully illustrated, bestselling book of tree portraits. With this astonishing collection, Thomas Pakenham produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owes little to conventional botany. The sixty trees are grouped according to their own strong personalities: Natives, Travellers, Shrines, Fantasies and Survivors. From the ancient native trees, many of which are huge and immeasurably old, to the exotic newcomers from Europe, the East and North America, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES captures the history and beauty of these entrancing living structures. Common to all these trees is their power to inspire awe and wonder. This is a lovingly researched book, beautifully illustrated with colour photographs, engravings and maps - a moving testimonial to the Earth`s largest and oldest living structures.