335 pages, indexed, illustrated. Overseas customers please not the book is very heavy and will attract additional postage - a lot. 'Orchids' arrived still in its shrink wrapper, which I have removed to allow customers to browse through it. ""A fabulous work. Highly recommended., "Library Journal" Orchids were brought to Europe from the tropics and subtropics beginning in the 17th century, and by 1839, English plant nurseries were selling 1,600 different kinds of the flower. Long prized for their exotic beauty and astonishing variety, orchids are the royal family of the plant kingdom. The story of this flower, from the hunt for new varieties in the wild in the 1800s to the development of the more than 100,000 hybrids that exist today, is related in fascinating detail in "Orchids". This beautiful book features text by one of the world's foremost orchid authorities alongside spectacular watercolor portraits of prize-winning orchids from the Royal Horticultural Society in London, which spearheaded orchid cultivation in Western Europe beginning in the 19th century. This exquisite collection of paintings commissioned by the RHS every year since 1897 represents the ultimate orchid pictorial history. "Orchids" is an indispensable sourcebook for those captivated by the beauty and infinite variety of this glamorous flower." (Publisher)