Little Illustrated Manual for Leaf Hunters

Maples, fig trees, ginkgos, apple trees, poplars, oaks. As in a bouquet, Piccolo manuale illustrato per cercatori di foglie (Little Illustrated Manual for Leaf Hunters) offers a selection of twenty trees and an identikit for each, made up of botanical characteristics and historical, artistic and literary references. Between one chapter and another, some blank pages invite the reader to return to their childhood and keep some examples: from the melancholy yellow fans of ginkgo to the blood-red tips of autumn maples, from the alternating, ovate-rhomboid, toothed long-stemmed leaves of birch, to those of the plane, recalling the palm of a hand, to the glossy, dark green elliptic leaves of lemon, with crenate edges. Piccolo manuale illustrato per cercatori di foglie is a miniature gem without age limit that encourages us to listen to and understand the world before us, invites us to return to the playfulness of childhood and the nostalgia typical of autumn. The volume ends with a bibliography, the “Little Arboreal Library”, which from Mario Rigoni Stern to Michael Pollan, via Tiziano Fratus, Emanuele Coccia and Mauro Agnoletti, proposes some passages of Italian and other narrative on the subject for reading.  

Piccolo manuale illustrato per cercatori di foglie
with texts by Giuseppe Zare and illustrations by Sofia Paravicini
Il Saggiatore, 2021