Craggy geezers, thoroughly twisted

Remarkable Trees

of the World

Thomas Pakenham

W. W. Norton & Co., $49.95

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Forty-six hundred years is a long time to be alive, but the twisted bristlecone pines of Inyo National Forest haven’t given up the ghost yet, making them the oldest natural monuments in this spectacular volume devoted to botanical champions -- trees famous by girth, height, volume, age or, simply, character.

Historian and photographer Pakenham traveled the globe for five years seeking out these legendary giants whose beauty, tenacity and adaptability are astonishing reminders of nature’s endurance.

It’s a compelling collection of oddity and majesty, legend and fact, photographed with panache and penned with graceful, dry wit. Amorously entwined baobabs canoodle on the coast of Madagascar. The lofty General Sherman sequoia pierces snowy Sierran skies. In Hiroshima, at the epicenter of the holocaust, a glorious ginkgo springs from blasted roots.

In the presence of such awesome green power we can but kneel, giving thanks that we share their Earth.

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Susan Dworski