This book contains brief biographies and portraits of famous botanists, as well as pictures and drawings of the specimens that the botanists were noted for. Botanists discussed include Joseph Trimble Rothrock - an American environmentalist, recognized as the "Father of Forestry" in Pennsylvania - and Charles Wilkins Short - a Kentuckian who discovered several species of plants, and has six species of plants named after him, who also practiced medicine and taught materia medica - among many others.