Download or read book When Plants Took Over the Planet written by Chris Thorogood and published by Happy Yak. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated book follows the amazing story of plant evolution, from the first plants arriving on a dark and lifeless planet to the colorful—often weird and wonderful—world of today’s varied and vibrant plant life.

Download or read book When Plants Took Over the Planet written by Chris Thorogood and published by Incredible Evolution. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated book follows the amazing story of plant evolution, from the first plants arriving on a dark and lifeless planet to the colorful—often weird and wonderful—world of today’s varied and vibrant plant life.

Download or read book Eating the Sun written by Oliver Morton and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-11-17 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wherever there is greenery, photosynthesis is working to make oxygen, release energy, and create living matter from the raw material of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. Without photosynthesis, there would be an empty world, an empty sky, and a sun that does nothing more than warm the rocks and reflect off the sea. Eating the Sun is the story of a world in crisis; an appreciation of the importance of plants; a history of the earth and the feuds and fantasies of warring scientists; a celebration of how the smallest things, enzymes and pigments, influence the largest things, the oceans, the rainforests, and the fossil fuel economy. Oliver Morton offers a fascinating, lively, profound look at nature's greatest miracle and sounds a much-needed call to arms—illuminating a potential crisis of climatic chaos and explaining how we can change our situation, for better or for worse.

Download or read book What a Plant Knows written by Daniel Chamovitz and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the secret lives of various plants, from the colors they see to whether or not they really like classical music to their ability to sense nearby danger.

Download or read book When We Became Humans written by Michael Bright and published by Words & Pictures. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes us human, and where did we come from? How did a clever ape climb down from the trees and change the world like no other animal has done before? This large-format, highly illustrated book guides readers through the key aspects of the human story, from the anatomical changes that allowed us to walk upright and increased brain size in our ancestors, to the social, cultural, and economic developments of our more recent cousins and our own species. Along the way, focus spreads take a closer look at some of the key species in our history, from the ancient Australopithecus Afarensis, 'Lucy', to our recent cousins the Neanderthals and ourselves, Homo sapiens. ​Looking beyond the anatomical evolution of humans, this book explores how our culture and way of living has evolved, from how trails of cowry shells reveal early trade between tribes, to how and why humans first domesticated dogs, horses, and farm animals, and began settling in permanent villages and cities. Through digestible information and absorbing illustration, young readers will be given an insight into their own origins, and what it really means to be a human.

Download or read book Old Enough to Save the Planet written by Loll Kirby and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring look at young climate change activists who are changing the world The world is facing a climate crisis like we’ve never seen before. And kids around the world are stepping up to raise awareness and try to save the planet. As people saw in the youth climate strike in September 2019, kids will not stay silent about this subject—they’re going to make a change. Meet 12 young activists from around the world who are speaking out and taking action against climate change. Learn about the work they do and the challenges they face, and discover how the future of our planet starts with each and every one of us.

Download or read book The Incredible Journey of Plants written by Stefano Mancuso and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of the Year for the Know-It-All by The Globe and Mail In this richly illustrated volume, a leading neurobiologist presents fascinating stories of plant migration that reveal unexpected connections between nature and culture. When we talk about migrations, we should study plants to understand that these phenomena are unstoppable. In the many different ways plants move, we can see the incessant action and drive to spread life that has led plants to colonize every possible environment on earth. The history of this relentless expansion is unknown to most people, but we can begin our exploration with these surprising tales, engagingly told by Stefano Mancuso. Generation after generation, using spores, seeds, or any other means available, plants move in the world to conquer new spaces. They release huge quantities of spores that can be transported thousands of miles. The number and variety of tools through which seeds spread is astonishing: we have seeds dispersed by wind, by rolling on the ground, by animals, by water, or by a simple fall from the plant, which can happen thanks to propulsive mechanisms, the swaying of the mother plant, the drying of the fruit, and much more. In this accessible, absorbing overview, Mancuso considers how plants convince animals to transport them around the world, and how some plants need particular animals to spread; how they have been able to grow in places so inaccessible and inhospitable as to remain isolated; how they resisted the atomic bomb and the Chernobyl disaster; how they are able to bring life to sterile islands; how they can travel through the ages, as they sail around the world.

Download or read book The Nation of Plants written by Stefano Mancuso and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this playful yet informative manifesto, a leading plant neurobiologist presents the eight fundamental pillars on which the life of plants—and by extension, humans—rests. Even if they behave as though they were, humans are not the masters of the Earth, but only one of its most irksome residents. From the moment of their arrival, about three hundred thousand years ago—nothing when compared to the history of life on our planet—humans have succeeded in changing the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. The causes of this reckless behavior are in part inherent in their predatory nature, but they also depend on our total incomprehension of the rules that govern a community of living beings. We behave like children who wreak havoc, unaware of the significance of the things they are playing with. In The Nation of Plants, the most important, widespread, and powerful nation on Earth finally gets to speak. Like attentive parents, plants, after making it possible for us to live, have come to our aid once again, giving us their rules: the first Universal Declaration of Rights of Living Beings written by the plants. A short charter based on the general principles that regulate the common life of plants, it establishes norms applicable to all living beings. Compared to our constitutions, which place humans at the center of the entire juridical reality, in conformity with an anthropocentricism that reduces to things all that is not human, plants offer us a revolution.

Download or read book When the Whales Walked written by Dougal Dixon and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment life crawled out of the oceans and onto land, to when our primate ancestors climbed down from the trees, the history of Planet Earth is filled with incredible stories. This beautifully illustrated guide explores some of the most exciting and incredible events in evolution, through 13 case studies. Step back in time and discover a world where whales once walked, crocodiles were warm-blooded, and snakes had legs! Meet terrifying giant birds, and tiny elephants living on islands in this fascinating creature guide like no other. Learn how whales once walked on four legs before taking to the oceans; how dinosaurs evolved into birds; and how the first cats were small and lived in trees. Featuring a stunning mix of annotated illustrations, illustrated scenes, and family trees, evolution is explained here in a captivating and novel style that will make children look at animals in a whole new way.

Download or read book The Plant Hunters written by Anita Silvey and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driven by an all-consuming passion, the plant hunters traveled around the world, facing challenges at every turn: tropical illnesses, extreme terrain, and dangerous animals. They battled piranhas, tigers, and vampire bats. Even the plants themselves could be lethal! But these intrepid eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers were determined to find and collect new and unusual specimens, no matter what the cost. Then they tried to transport the plants—and themselves—home alive. Creating an important legacy in science, medicine, and agriculture, the plant hunters still inspire the scientific and environmental work of contemporary plant enthusiasts. Working from primary sources—journals, letters, and notes from the field—Anita Silvey introduces us to these daring adventurers and scientists. She takes readers into the heart of their expeditions to then-uncharted places such as the Amazon basin, China, and India. As she brings a colorful cast of characters to life, she shows what motivated these Indiana Jones–type heroes. In The Plant Hunters, science, history, and adventure have been interwoven to tell a largely forgotten—yet fascinating—story.

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 The Story of Planet Earth written by Anne Rooney and published by Arcturus Editions. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young readers can take an intrepid journey through the 4.5-billion-year history of Planet Earth with this beautifully illustrated full-color hardback guide. From Earth's formation from swirling stardust to the present day and near-future, The Story of Planet Earth tells the incredible tale of our planet. Readers can discover the story behind everything from volcanoes to weather, where the Moon and our mountains came from and other fascinating secrets. They will witness and explore: * The formation of Earth and the early Solar System * Ice ages and periods of warmth * How volcanoes shaped our lands * Dinosaurs and extinction events * Earth's future in our hands Featuring fun fact boxes, an illustrated timeline and a glossary of key terms, The Story of Earth supports STEM learning in an entertaining way. It's a perfect gift for curious children aged 8+. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Story of Everything is a beautifully illustrated series for young readers which tells the story of life as we know it, from the big bang to evolution and the history of human development.

Download or read book Green The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet written by Nicola Davies and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a lively look at the biology of plants on Earth—and their vast importance to our planet—with this wide-ranging exploration from an award-winning team. This tree doesn’t look like it’s doing very much. It just stands there in the sunlight, big and GREEN. But in fact, this tree is busy . . . On land and in the seas, green plants make the oxygen and food that many living things—including us—need to survive. Covering the evolution of the first plants billions of years ago, the secret, microscopic workings of trees and leaves today, and the role of plants in both creating fossil fuels and combating climate change, this book is a lush and fascinating introduction to the science of plants that goes well beyond photosynthesis. Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton, the acclaimed team behind Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes, Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth, and Grow: Secrets of Our DNA, have crafted a hopeful exploration of green life that will encourage readers to treasure the flora of Earth’s many ecosystems.

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 The Emerald Planet written by David Beerling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants have profoundly moulded the Earth's climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being 'silent witnesses to the passage of time', plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment throughout history as much as that environment has shaped them. In The Emerald Planet, David Beerling puts plants centre stage, revealing the crucial role they have played in driving global changes in the environment, in recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and in helping us to predict its future. His account draws together evidence from fossil plants, from experiments with their living counterparts, and from computer models of the 'Earth System', to illuminate the history of our planet and its biodiversity. This new approach reveals how plummeting carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to the evolution of the leaf; how plants played a starring role in pushing oxygen levels upwards, allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the Carboniferous; and it strengthens fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from Victorian times onwards whose discoveries provided the crucial background to these and the other puzzles. This understanding of our planet's past sheds a sobering light on our own climate-changing activities, and offers clues to what our climatic and ecological futures might look like. There could be no more important time to take a close look at plants, and to understand the history of the world through the stories they tell. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Download or read book Thus Spoke the Plant written by Monica Gagliano and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A research scientist’s fascinating study of plant communication reveals how we “have been misunderstanding plants, and ourselves, for all of history” (The Paris Review). “A compelling story of discovery . . . [that] will change the way you see the world”—for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees (Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass) In this “phytobiography”—a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant—research scientist Monica Gagliano shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people—beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own 'voices' and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has re-ignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.

Download or read book Plant and Planet written by Anthony Huxley and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1975 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the final analysis, man, be he botanist, gardener, or plain Homo sapiens, is utterly dependent on plants, while they can exist quite happily without him. How different from and similar to us is this major life form, and yet how little most of us know about it. Here, then, is the world of plants in all its thrusting vigor, incredible variety, ecological delicacy, and unbelievable ingenuity, presented by a writer whose command of the subject is prodigious. Plants have no bone, shell, muscle, blood, or nerves, and yet their lives have striking parallels with ours. [This book] illuminates their life cycle from germination to death, their life styles, their chemistry and structure, their capacities for colonization, their opportunism, and their amazing sex life--all based on water, air, and soil and fueled by their unique ability to convert light into energy. As English reviewer Adrian Bell said after reading Mr. Huxley's book, 'You soon realize that in strolling in the meadows in the merry month of May you are witnessing an orgy of sex beside which La Dolce Vita is like a bishop's garden party.' In addition to their multifarious sex practices, one marvels at the inventiveness of plants: aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structural engineering, plumbing, insulation, chemical messengers, the slingshot, the poison dart, the triggered trap, all manner of deception, self-adornment--all these the plants perfected long before mankind. This book literally provides a plant's-eye view of the world. Rigorous in approach and style, it lends little solace to those who hope to make their philodendrons grow by giving them Brahms instead of The Jefferson Airplane. Nonetheless, it cannot fail to fascinate anyone whose chlorophyll-consciousness has been raised by such books as Tompkins' The Secret Life of Plants. By the time one has finished it, one sees the verdant world quite differently and can only nod approvingly when the author says at the end: 'If man wholly or partly destroys himself, the probability is that most natural vegetable life will survive.'"--Dust jacket.