The first in what is an excellent series of books photographed by Geoff Nicholls. A beautifully illustrated guide to 107 plants and some of the butterflies, birds and mammals found in forests of South Africa. The text provides notes on the plants, utilization and gardening, as well as scientific and common names in local languages. This lightweight 72 page book with 170 full colour photographs will be a delight to gardeners, tourists, environmentalist and educationalists alike. This book is designed to cover plants in the forests of South Africa and highlight the beauty, value and importance of our forests with a view to promoting long term conservation and sustainable management. It provides an easy introduction to the plants and main animals of this forest biome. A biome is a large natural region or ecological community, each with its own distinctive vegetation shaped by differences in climate and topography. There are nine biomes in South Africa: desert, fynbos, nama-karroo, succulent karroo, succulent thicket, Indian Ocean coastal belt, grassland, savanna and forest. Forest is the smallest biome, only 1/2% of the land mass. Additional information on each plant will also be found in Elsa Pooley's best selling field guides to Trees which is out of print and currently under revision, also Wild Flowers of KwaZulu-Natal, and Mountain Flowers of the Drakensberg and Lesotho.