A REUNION OF TREES <i> by Stephen A. Spongberg (Harvard: $35; 270 pp.)</i>

It wasn’t as if North America lacked for vegetation when the first Europeans came over, but, never satisfied, generations of botanists and plant hunters labored to bring to these uncomplaining shores specimens as exotic as ginkgo trees and as pedestrian as poison ivy. Though this fancifully illustrated survey focuses on flora located in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, it still manages to be rife with stirring tales of intrepid botanists such as E. H. (Chinese) Wilson (his photo of white Japanese pines is above), who scoured the far reaches of Asia searching for the unlikeliest of transplant candidates.