<p><b>Winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History<br><br>Combining rigorous research with lyrical writing, <i>Elderflora </i>chronicles the complex roles ancient trees have played in the modern world and illuminates how we might need old trees now more than ever.</b><br><br>Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in <i>Elderflora</i>, our respect took a modern turn in the eighteenth century when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travellers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists to protect sacred groves. Exploitation accompanied sanctification, as old-growth forests succumbed to imperial expansion and the industrial revolution.<br><br>Taking us from Lebanon to New Zealand to California, Farmer surveys the complex history of the world’s olde
