Download or read book How Flowers Changed the World written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1996 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This graceful essay on the pivotal role of flowers in human evolution is certain to delight those readers already familiar with Loren Eiseley and to find an audience among naturalists, gardeners, and lovers of flowers everywhere. Gerald Ackerman's color floral portraits provide a visual counterpoint to the wondrous text. Two-color text & printed endpapers. 19 color photos.
Download or read book Flowers written by William C. Burger and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2009-12-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading botanist and popular science writer examines the crucial role flowers have played in life's evolutionary scheme as a fundamental energy resource for most of the biosphere.
Download or read book The Reason for Flowers written by Stephen Buchmann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes reveals their origins, myriad shapes, colors, textures and scents, bizarre sex lives, and how humans-- and the natural world-- relate and depend upon them.
Download or read book The Botany of Desire written by Michael Pollan and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-05-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
Download or read book 52 Flowers that Shook My World written by Charlotte Du Cann and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991 Charlotte Du Cann leaves a fashionable London life and goes on the road. Her decision to break free has been influenced by the appearance of a flower, known as Mexican wormseed. Later she begins an exploration into the language of plants that changes her direction - and the territory she travels through - completely. The plants come dreams, in visions, in medicine ways and myths, in the lives of writers and in writing, and as she follows their track, crossing the thorny deserts of Arizona and the flowering wastelands of England, they call her back to the heartland, back to the shore where the sea-kale grows, to restore a world where nature and beauty are at the centre of life, and, most of all, to return to herself, someone who loved to be light and at liberty, an independent female being at home on the earth. From the Oxford Botanical Gardens to the streets of Mexico City, this is the story of search for a reconnection with nature and human liberation that speaks urgently of the future.
Download or read book Flowers Art Bouquets written by Sixtine Dubly and published by Assouline Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be it a single delicate bud in a simple clear vase or an explosion of colorful blossoms, a brilliant bouquet accents an atmosphere and brightens the mood like nothing else. The beauty of flowers has inspired artists, designers, poets, and myriad other creators for centuries: the Dutch masters of the 1600s and impressionist painters from Manet to Van Gogh, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret, even the inimitable Andy Warhol. Flowers: Art & Bouquets showcases a glorious profusion of floral images and interpretations across a spectrum of artistic media and time periods. Design writer Sixtine Dubly chronicles the evolution of floral design in this remarkable compendium, which also features stunning work by more than forty contemporary floral artists in London, Paris, and New York, from minimalist to elaborate. This treasury of gorgeous imagery blooms in resplendent color before the reader’s eyes.
Download or read book Flora Unveiled written by Lincoln Taiz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on how the the scientific discovery of "plant sex" unfolded due to cultural biases, beliefs, and perceptions about plant reproduction. "Flora Unveiled" is a deep history of perceptions about plant gender and sexuality, from the Paleolithic to the nineteenth century. The evidence suggests that a plants-as-female gender bias both prevented the discovery of two sexes in plants until the late 17th century, and delayed its acceptance for another 150 years.
Download or read book This Is Your Mind on Plants written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.
Download or read book Plants and Empire written by Londa Schiebinger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.
Download or read book Plants that Changed the World written by Bertha S. Dodge and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What Are Flowers written by Kelley MacAulay and published by Plants Close-Up. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces the physical characteristics, life cycle, and role of flowers in the world of plants.
Download or read book Early Flowers and Angiosperm Evolution written by Else Marie Friis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent discovery of diverse fossil flowers and floral organs in Cretaceous strata has revealed astonishing details about the structural and systematic diversity of early angiosperms. Exploring the rich fossil record that has accumulated over the last three decades, this is a unique study of the evolutionary history of flowering plants from their earliest phases in obscurity to their dominance in modern vegetation. The discussion provides comprehensive biological and geological background information, before moving on to summarise the fossil record in detail. Including previously unpublished results based on research into Early and Late Cretaceous fossil floras from Europe and North America, the authors draw on direct palaeontological evidence of the pattern of angiosperm evolution through time. Synthesising palaeobotanical data with information from living plants, this unique book explores the latest research in the field, highlighting connections with phylogenetic systematics, structure and the biology of extant angiosperms.
Download or read book National Geographic Readers Seed to Plant written by Kristin Baird Rattini and published by National Geographic Society. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kids see plants, flowers, and trees around them every day. In this lively and educational reader, they'll learn how those plants grow. Kids will take this magical journey from seed pollination to plant growth, learning about what plants need to thrive and grow with the same careful text, brilliant photographs, and the fun approach National Geographic Readers are known for.
Download or read book Around the World in 80 Plants written by Jonathan Drori and published by Laurence King Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspirational and beautifully illustrated book that tells the stories of 80 plants from around the globe. In his follow-up to the bestselling Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori takes another trip across the globe, bringing to life the science of plants by revealing how their worlds are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. From the seemingly familiar tomato and dandelion to the eerie mandrake and Spanish 'moss' of Louisiana, each of these stories is full of surprises. Some have a troubling past, while others have ignited human creativity or enabled whole civilizations to flourish. With a colourful cast of characters all brought to life by illustrator Lucille Clerc, this is a botanical journey of beauty and brilliance. 'A beautiful celebration of the plants and flowers that surround us and a quiet call to arms for change' The Herald 'This charming and beautifully illustrated book takes readers on a voyage of discovery, exploring the many ingenious and surprising uses for plants in modern science and throughout history' Kew Magazine 'With beautiful illustrations from Lucille Clerc, this captivating book traverses the globe via plants: nettles in England, mangoes in India and tulips in the Netherlands' Daily Mail
Download or read book The Remarkable Story of the Very First Flower written by Jane Madson McCabe and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About one hundred million years ago when the dinosaurs were disappearing from the earth, flowering plants appeared. These two things are related: flowering plants created more food for the emerging, warm-blooded mammals. This book envisions the existence of the very first flower on earth for children; it tells of her hardships: of being tiny and seemingly insignificant, different from the giant plants, of her friendship with a dinosaur and a mouse, the loss of her flower and the emergence of a berry which contains the seeds for more flowers.
Download or read book Waste written by Catherine Coleman Flowers and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The MacArthur grant–winning environmental justice activist’s riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America’s most vulnerable A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur “genius,” grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers’s life’s work—a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this “powerful and moving book” (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards—not only those of poor minorities.
Download or read book Seeing Flowers written by Teri Dunn Chace and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve all seen red roses, blue irises, and yellow daffodils. But when we really look closely at a flower, whole new worlds of beauty and intricacy emerge. Using a unique process that far surpasses conventional macro photography, Robert Llewellyn shows us details that few of us have ever seen: the amazing architecture of stamens and pistils; the subtle shadings on a petal; the secret recesses of nectar tubes. Complementing Llewellyn’s stunning photographs are Teri Dunn Chace’s lyrical, illuminating essays. By highlighting the features that distinguish twenty-eight of the most common families of flowering plants, Chace gives us fascinating insights into the natural history of flowers, such as the relationship between pollinators and floral form and color. At the same time she gives us a deeper appreciation of why and how flowers have become so deeply embedded in human culture. Whether you’re a nature lover, a gardener, a photography buff, or someone who simply responds to the timeless beauty and variety of the floral world, Seeing Flowers will be a source of enduring delight.
