What a Pine Tree is

Florian Weiß & Lucia Jay von Seldeneck
What a Pine Tree is
– Stories from the Botanical World

Book design: Studio Wu 無

As each story in this book illustrates, plants offer us daily reminders of the fact that all things are connected. They consistently create the grounds for their own existence, again and again. And so we repeatedly find them at the centre of our lives. In Hong Kong, for example, ‘spidermen’ use bamboo scaffolding to construct the tallest skyscrapers in the world. In Flanders, in the middle of a battlefield full of poppies, a poet finds hope again. In Lusatia, people use an ancient technique to obtain fibres from stalks of flax, and weave them together to create linen. And In Vienna, Alpine stars sparkle in the hair of the Empress.

In their new book, Florian Weiß and Lucia Jay von Seldeneck bring together 30 plants from all over the world, telling the story of each through text and images. Florian Weiß has provided this volume for book lovers with detailed illustrations: using a self-built dotting machine, he has etched a series of impressive plant images onto the page, dot by dot, before colourising them with dyes made using natural materials. Inspired by historic botanical books as well as the aesthetics of old index cards, the Berlin design studio Wu has transformed a series of stories and illustrations into a true work of art.

• “What a Pine Tree is” is the Toad of the Month by STUBE