Synopsis This book has been prepared to meet a great demand for a simple book on the common trees of India. It was written by a lover of nature, particularly of forest wealth, who knew his botany as well as aesthetics. He avoided involving the reader in the complex nomenclature of trees and explained the individual characteristic of each family in a simple language that should be intelligible to both the specialist and the generalist. This interesting text is matched by brilliant illustrations by Ganga Singh that unravel many a mystery about the trees and their various uses physical, emotional and even therapeutic. The trees selected are not common forest trees as a rule but they have been chosen as the commonest or most conspicuous trees seen generally in the plains of India excluding the moist parts of Assam and Bengal and a tract about 100 miles wide along the sea coast. When the former forest botanist at the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, wrote this immensely readable book, little shaps did he realise that it would remain an authentic source book on Indian trees even after much advanced research on dfferent aspects of this natural gift of the environment.