Hallé’s Atlas aims to show that “the equatorial forest isn’t the ‘green inferno’ that colonialists and adventurers have so often confronted,” as he writes in the book’s introduction, but “a universe with magical allure.” His drawings represent an investment in time that returns a dividend of wonder more satisfying than the ephemeral thrill afforded by the photograph.

>"A series of botanical encounters in the rainforest, excerpted from Francis Hallé’s book “Atlas of Poetic Botany.”"

The French botanist and biologist Francis Hallé has spent 40 years in pursuit of the strange and beautiful plant specimens of the rainforest. In his “Atlas of Poetic Botany,” excerpted below, he invites readers to tour the farthest reaches of the rainforest in search of exotic — and poetic — plant life.