plants

Darwin’s Most Wonderful Plants

November 8, 2019

“Most of us think of Darwin at work on The Beagle, taking inspiration for his theory of evolution from his travels in the Galapagos.” So opens the Profile Books’ introduction to Dr. Ken Thompson’s recently published “Darwin’s Wonderful Plants.” I know I certainly did. That is, of course, until I made a visit to Down House this past summer and saw for myself his remarkable greenhouse and gardens, where he spent the decades following the return from his famous voyage cultivating and experimenting upon plants – particularly carnivorous and climbing ones.

This Week’s In Defense of Plants is Mossome!

October 1, 2018

If you, like me, like moss, you’ll be pleased to learn that you can indulge your bryophilic inclinations to your heart’s content through the most recent episode – number 180 – of the In Defense of Plants podcast.

Jerry Jenkins Discussing Woody Plants

May 19, 2018

Episode 40 of the Cornell University Press 1869 podcast features a very insight-filled discussion with Jerry Jenkins, director of the Northern Forest Atlas Project, about his recently published “Woody Plants of the Northern Forest; A Photographic Guide” and its more field-worthy complement “Woody Plants of the Northern Forest: Quick Guide.”

Plants of the World

February 13, 2018

I could spend paragraphs explaining how significant the recent publication of “Plants of the World; An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Vascular Plants” is to the history of the literature of botany; how it’s “the first book to systematically explore every vascular plant family on earth,” and how it’s “organized in a modern phylogenetic order [with] detailed entries for each family.”