This May sees the paperback release of Richard Fortey’s 2016 book The Wood for the Trees. Here, Richard introduces the origins of his book and provides us with an edited excerpt from it, focusing on two rather mysterious plant species.
In July 2011, my wife and I bought four acres of Beech-and-Bluebell woodland in the Chiltern Hills. I had spent my working life at The Natural History Museum, researching ancient fossil trilobites. A career behind the scenes at a great museum was a privilege, but it left the naturalist I had always been undernourished.