one of those books that make you think and want to learn more and makes me want to see the world more from the eyes of the author than those little moments we get from the book.
If you want to learn more about our world, defiantly a great read!

This is an important book which makes vital points about plant conservation. It is in may ways interesting and informative, but I did have my reservations about the way in which Carlos Magdalena presents his work and his message.

Magdalena has been a botanical horticulturalist at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew for many years. This means that he has received the best training and experience available in his field, and it is evident that he really knows what he is talking about. He is genuinely deeply concerned with plant conservation and driven to do all he can about it. This has given rise among colleagues to his slightly tongue-in-cheek title of The Plant Messiah, and in this book he tells us about how his upbringing led him eventually to Kew and about some of his inspiring work in rescuing endangered species. He makes the detail of the work very interesting - even minutiae of the techniques of propagation and grafting for example - and his world-wide forays to save plants from extinction in the face of ignorance, greed, political intransigence and the like are also a fascinating read.

I did react rather against the general tone of the book, though. I want to be clear that I unreservedly support what Magdalena is doing and I admire his untiring and sincere efforts. I am rather less admiring of the somewhat egocentric narrative here and the way in which he seems to have taken the Messiah tag a little too seriously. I had a strong sense of his always trying to show us that he cares more than anybody else and has insights which others are too obtuse to see. It is noticeable how infrequently he uses the pronoun "we"; when there is brilliance or success it is "I," but errors are generally by "people." Science is a collaborative effort, and a little more humility and recognition of that would be welcome.

Magdalena also sometimes allows his passion to outstrip reasoning; for example, he says "Destroy one species and you give yourself permission to destroy them all." Well, no, Carlos – you don't. You may make it slightly easier to destroy some others, but that's not the same thing at all. There's quite a lot of this sort of exaggerated rhetoric, which for me weakens rather than strengthens his case.

I have given this book four stars because its message is so important and there is a good deal of real interest to be found here. I repeat, I think what Carlos Magdalena is doing is admirable and vitally important – but I find spending time in his company can be hard going in places.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

This book was a better read than most of the fiction I've read lately. The author's anecdotal stories are quite thrilling at times. The reader finds themselves wondering "will it propagate??" As the author yet again attempts to revive a plant thought to be already or near extinct.

I found myself reading some of these stories out loud to people and everyone was enchanted by them.

While reading this I took the time to look up most of the plants mentioned and did quite a bit of research into each. It's great to learn something new.

I read this book very slowly, one chapter at the time, in the time it took me to read this book I have also read several fiction books but those books have 3 or 4 stars and this has 5. I very rarely give 5 stars.
Carlos Magdalena works at Kew Gardens (the way he got the job shows that if immigrations laws were to change, Britain would lose out great talents like him). He is an expert conservationist and an expert in tropical plants and waterlilies.
Most of the book is about his attempts at saving one species or another of rare plants and that is fascinating, Carlos Magdalena gives us lots of information, sometimes with a bit of humour, not only on plants but also on zoology, history and so on.
It helps that I am a Friend of Kew Gardens which I visit quite often, so it was particularly interesting to read what happens behind closed doors.

But the book is also a call to action for all of us. We only have a planet and we are destroying or at best we don't seem to care about it. Plants feeds us, gives us material for our clothes and other objects but they also heal us and provide the habitat and eco-system for many creatures. Basically we can't live without plants. Each plants that becomes extinct is gone forever and might have provided a cure or a solution to a disease or problem in the future.
I don't know if Carlos Magdalena is a messiah but it seems obvious that he is extremely passionate and has a lot of knowledge and a strong message. If you are interested in nature or conservation read this book, but it would be good if those people who are not interested in conservation read it.

3.5 stars.

Any subtitle that mentions searching for rare species immediately draws me in, so I automatically clicked the request button when I saw this on NetGalley.

I was expecting this to be more of a pure non-fiction book about various efforts to save various rare plant species, but instead it was a memoir about Magdalena's own travels and efforts to save some specific species. I enjoyed the memoir aspect of it, as Magdalena has an easy to read style and some amusing stories, but I also was a tad disappointed that it was wasn't a compilation of stories about a wider variety of plants. However, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book at all!

Magdalena is obviously very passionate about plants, and this shows throughout the book. His enthusiasm for helping to propagate rare plants shines through in his writing style--it was a bit frantically written at times, but the narrative of it remained easy to follow throughout. It was a bit overwhelming with all the Latin names thrown around, and no pictures to reference to see some of the nuanced differences between plants. However, because each chapter focused on one specific species of plant, it wasn't too overwhelming.

I do hope that the final version will have some pictures of some of the plants and places mentioned, as it would make comprehending some of the nuanced differences in species and sub-species easier.

I'd highly recommend this book to people who are passionate about gardening and botany--the more you know about plants, the more you'll likely enjoy it! It's also a good read for someone like me, who appreciates plants and botany, but isn't a hobbyist or expert in plant-life.

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