Over 120 years ago Henry John Elwes and Dr Augustine Henry embarked on an epic project to compile a comprehensive catalogue of British and Irish trees. Published originally in seven volumes between 1906 and 1913, the work ran to 2022 pages, 412 main photographs and recorded over 500 species. This new book is the first to focus on the previously overlooked role of photography in the original survey, reproducing 64 of the original images and contextualising them with a new essay by photographic historian Michael Pritchard and a postscript by Björn Andersson. The original project was underpinned by a Victorian fascination for recording the world, by new printing techniques and by the application of photography to art and science. The original volumes used collotype reproductions, prized for their wide tonal range and ability to retain detail; despite photography forming an integral part of the publication only a few photographers were credited—principally Mr Wallis and Mr Foster, working under Elwes's direction—the rest drawn from photographs supplied by owners or neighbours of particular estates, framing the trees with deliberate typological uniformity.