Martius: The book of Palms

After an epic Amazonian journey through Brazil and Peru, German botanist von Martius compiled an unsurpassed catalogue of all known genera of palm. This exquisite encyclopedic treasury is a jewel of 19th-century botany, as remarkable for its meticulous classification, as it is for its maps, color landscapes, and cross-sectioned diagrams showing the architecture of these majestic trees.