Over the past few years, I’ve seen a number of books about bees cross my desk. From reading and reviewing them I’ve learned quite a lot about these amazing creatures; their biology, their ecological significance, and – as particularly emphasized in so many of these books – the challenges they face surviving in the modern […]
For years we’ve been hearing story after story about the importance of conserving honeybees – specifically the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera. Then on 26 January 2018, Science magazine published “Conserving honey bees does not help wildlife” by Jonas Geldmann and Juan P. González-Varo, in which the authors reported that “managed honey bees can harm wild pollinator species.”
When I first heard about the new book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask; Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings by Mary Siisip Geniusz, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, and Annmarie Geniusz, my mind immediately left back to a previous ethnobotanical book I read a few years ago: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss; A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses – a book I found both fascinating and profound.
Too small to be seen in detail without a strong hand lens and existing in a layer of atmosphere surrounding all terrestrial objects that is too subtle for our crude senses to perceive, mosses flourish throughout the world playing roles in the global ecosystem that we are only beginning to understand.