PURDOM ad FARRER. Plant Hunters on the Eaves of China. 2019. 305 (185 col.) figs. 6 maps. 352 p. 4to. Paper bd.

This volume represents the first in-depth biographical study of the life of the often forgotten plant hunter William Purdom. In doing so, it also explores the lives and work of two unusual men. Both born in 1880, the year of the death of Robert Fortune, they came from completely different social standings. Purdom was the eldest son of the head gardener of a property-owning businessman in the Lake District. Reginald Farrer, on the other hand, was the first scion of landed gentry who owned a huge estate in the Yorkshire Dales of England.

Despite their vastly contrasting backgrounds, their common interest in alpine flowers, brought them together in an expedition to hunt for new plants for British gardens on the mountain slopes where the eaves of China meets the roof of Tibet. In 1914, fate took them to the far-frontier walled Gansu city of Siku, and then in 1915, on to the mysterious abbeys of the Buddhist Lamas of Tientang and Chebson.

Both died young; Farrer on the rain-soaked border hills of Burma in 1920, Purdom in Peking a year later. However, in our gardens their legacy of beautiful plants, some bearing their names, will remain alive always.