Showing titles in Botany & Plants

A wonderful cocktail of extraordinary writing and heartfelt appreciation for the natural world. An essential oddity for any book collection. In this charming and witty companion, Jack Cooke explores the city through its canopy: teetering on the edge of an oak's branches, scurrying up a Scots pine, spying views from the treetops that few have ever had the chance to see. He takes us through the parks, over the canals and rivers and into secret gardens in his journey sometimes only 10 foot above the street.

Exploding myths and offering research-backed advice, this audiobook provides a shortcut to decades of gardening experience by explaining the science behind how a garden grows. Why does my cherry tree blossom but never fruit? What's the most effective slug deterrent? Could I breed my own unique variety of flower? The world of gardening can be a mystifying place, with so many instructions to follow and often little explanation as to why.

Ben Law has lived as a woodsman in Prickly Nut Wood for over 20 years. His authentic, incredible sense of the land and the wildlife, and his respect for age-old traditions and how to sustain them offers a wonderful, inviting insight into the life and character of Prickly Nut Wood. Having travelled to Papua New Guinea and the Amazon, observing age-old techniques for living in, working in and preserving forests and woodland, Ben Law felt compelled to return home and apply his learning to a 400-year-old plot of woodland near where he grew up.

Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even the pine tree stood on its own very hills” but when civilization took over, “the mountain oak, the pine were felled.” This happened for a simple reason: trees have been the principal fuel and building material of every society over the millennia, from the time urban areas were settled until the middle of the nineteenth century. To this day trees still fulfill these roles for a good portion of the world’s population.

A transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved pieces, along with new essays on topics and stories ranging from nostalgia and science fiction to the true account of a refugee’s flight to the UK.

With a new introduction exclusively in audio, read by Anna Pavord. The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish and devotion have all played their parts in the development of the tulip into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts and plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.

As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms. Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them.

We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.

Would your garden, small or large, in town or country, win a prize? Is there room for improvement? Everybody has favourite plants, but the ability to put them all together to ensure a splendid show throughout the year is a skill that must be acquired. The Well-Chosen Garden will guide you to making the most of your available space, help you avoid untimely gaps, colour clashes and many other pitfalls of garden planning.

The Arctic Treeline - the northern limit of the boreal forest that encircles the globe in an almost unbroken green ring - is the second largest biome on our planet. At this little-known frontline of climate change, the trees have been creeping towards the pole for 50 years already. Six of the tree species that populate these forests (larch, spruce, mountain ash, downy birch, balsam poplar and Scots pine) form the central protagonists of Ben Rawlence's story.

In this practical guide, you will discover how mushrooms develop, cultivation techniques, ideal soil and climatic conditions, the best species to grow at home, and the exceptional health benefits of some varieties. Not many know how easy it is to grow tasty mushrooms independently in their own homes. Most people prefer to buy mushrooms of dubious origin in shopping malls rather than organically self-producing the healthiest and tastiest species.

Psychedelic Shamanism presents the spiritual and shamanic properties of psychotropic plants and discusses how they can be used to understand the structure of human consciousness. Author Jim DeKorne offers authoritative information about the cultivation, processing, and correct dosages for various psychotropic plant substances, including the belladonna alkaloids, d-lysergic acid amide, botanical analogues of LSD, mescaline, ayahuasca, DMT, and psilocybin.

Acclaimed nature writer Susan Hand Shetterly opens a window into the world of this fascinating organism by providing an elegant, often poetic, look at life on the rugged shore of the Gulf of Maine. Shetterly offers a close look at the life cycle of seaweed and introduces us to the men and women who farm and harvest it - and their increasingly difficult task of protecting this critical natural resource against forces both natural and man-made.

Best-selling author and environmentalist Jonathan Drori follows in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg as he tells the stories of 80 magnificent trees from all over the globe. In Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori uses plant science to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life, from the romantic to the regrettable. From the trees of Britain, to India's sacred banyan tree, they offer us sanctuary and inspiration - not to mention the raw materials for everything from aspirin to maple syrup.

Dans ce livre plein de grâce, acclamé dans le monde entier, le forestier Peter Wohlleben nous apprend comment s'organise la société des arbres. Les forêts ressemblent à des communautés humaines. Les parents vivent avec leurs enfants, et les aident à grandir. Les arbres répondent avec ingéniosité aux dangers. Leur système radiculaire, semblable à un réseau internet végétal, leur permet de partager des nutriments avec les arbres malades mais aussi de communiquer entre eux.

A practical and compassionate guide to rekindling your connection with nature and opening up to plant consciousness for guidance and inspiration to enrich your path. This is a heart-centered journey of discovery, rewilding, and enchantment, inspired by the author’s experiences with plants while running a flower farm.

Flowers, and the fruits that follow, feed, clothe, sustain, and inspire all humanity. Flowers are used to celebrate all-important occasions, to express love, and are also the basis of global industries. Americans buy 10 million flowers a day, and perfumes are a worldwide industry worth $30 billion annually. Stephen Buchmann takes us along on an exploratory journey of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes while simultaneously bringing joy and health.

What a Mushroom Lives For pushes today's mushroom renaissance in compelling new directions. For centuries, Western science has promoted a human- and animal-centric framework of what counts as action, agency, movement, and behavior. But, as Michael Hathaway shows, the world-making capacities of mushrooms radically challenge this orthodoxy by revealing the lively dynamism of all forms of life. The book tells the fascinating story of one particularly prized species, the matsutake, and the astonishing ways it is silently yet powerfully shaping worlds.

With multiple studies backing its findings and thorough explanations for each technique, The Secret Therapy of Trees is a treasure trove of tips on how to harness the regenerative power of plants and reconnect with our planet's natural spaces, bringing us health and happiness. You'll also discover: which plants purify the environment at home and in the office, the benefits of negative ions and where to find them, and how to recharge through contact with trees.

Oliver Sacks, the best-selling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterised portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern.