Carlos Magdalena - The Plant Messiah

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Important and interesting, but a little too messianic

This is an important book which makes vital points about plant conservation.  It is in may ways interesting and informative, but I did have my reservations about the way in which Carlos Magdalena presents his work and his message.

Magdalena has been a botanical horticulturalist at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew for many years.  This means that he has received the best training and experience available in his field, and it is evident that he really knows what he is talking about.  He is genuinely deeply concerned with plant conservation and driven to do all he can about it.  This has given rise among colleagues to his slightly tongue-in-cheek title of The Plant Messiah, and in this book he tells us about how his upbringing led him eventually to Kew and about some of his inspiring work in rescuing endangered species.  He makes the detail of the work very interesting - even minutiae of the techniques of propagation and grafting for example - and his world-wide forays to save plants from extinction in the face of ignorance, greed, political intransigence and the like are also a fascinating read.

I did react rather against the general tone of the book, though.  I want to be clear that I unreservedly support what Magdalena is doing and I admire his untiring and sincere efforts.   I am rather less admiring of the somewhat egocentric narrative here and the way in which he seems to have taken the Messiah tag a little too seriously.  I had a strong sense of his always trying to show us that he cares more than anybody else and has insights which others are too obtuse to see.  It is noticeable how infrequently he uses the pronoun "we"; when there is brilliance or success it is "I," but errors are generally by "people."  Science is a collaborative effort, and a little more humility and recognition of that would be welcome. 

Magdalena also sometimes allows his passion to outstrip reasoning; for example, he says "Destroy one species and you give yourself permission to destroy them all."  Well, no, Carlos – you don't.  You may make it slightly easier to destroy some others, but that's not the same thing at all.  There's quite a lot of this sort of exaggerated rhetoric, which for me weakens rather than strengthens his case.

I have given this book four stars because its message is so important and there is a good deal of real interest to be found here.  I repeat, I think what Carlos Magdalena is doing is admirable and vitally important – but I find spending time in his company can be hard going in places.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)