In The Footsteps Of Joseph Dalton Hooker – A Sikkim Adventure

In The Footsteps Of Joseph Dalton Hooker – A Sikkim Adventure

Published by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, In The Footsteps Of Joseph Dalton Hooker – A Sikkim Adventure, is a book featuring more than 500 coloured photographs by famous plantsman Seamus O’Brien who has followed in the footsteps of the famed 19th Century botanist, Joseph Dalton Hooker.

In 1847, Joseph Dalton Hooker went on an expedition to Sikkim in the Himalayan region where he would discover botanical treasures previously unknown in the West. Hooker would go on to become one of the great botanists of the 19th Century as well as a director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

In this travelogue, author Seamus O’Brien retraces Hooker’s footsteps in Sikkim, bringing alive danger and discovery that Hooker and his companions experienced in the 19th Century. Seamus describes how his drive for this expedition came from a desire to see in the wild the plant discoveries made by Hooker.

Seamus O’Brien is Ireland’s best-known plantsman and has travelled across the world to study plants in their native habitats. He was trained at the prestigious National Botanic Gardens, in Dublin, and holds an International Diploma in Botanic Gardens Management from the renowned Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Following in Hooker’s famous footsteps, the Irish author describes how these places compare to the descriptions made by Hooker – a highly skilled geographer and cartographer – 170 years earlier, and how in many ways how little Sikkim has changed little over the course of time in the intervening years.