Roots to seeds: 400 years of Oxford botany by Stephen A Harris 2021. Bodleian Library Botanic gardens are important resources, both for plants and people. For example they have a major role in helping humanity manage...
Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany, 2nd edition by Michael J Balick and Paul Alan Cox 2021. CRC Press Some books have an iconic status in their field. Take, for example, Balick and Cox’s 1996/7...
Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori 2021. Laurence King Publishing Ltd. In my review of Jonathan Drori’s Around the World in 80 Trees [‘80 Trees’], I suggested there were many more tree species worthy of...
Amber Waves: The extraordinary biography of wheat, from wild grass to world megacrop by Catherine Zabinski 2020. The University of Chicago Press. Biographies are usually written about people. However, Catherine...
Berries by Victoria Dickenson 2020. Reaktion Books Ltd. Even though I’m a Botanist I’ve never had a great understanding of fruits and seeds. I am however, aware that the fruit botanically known as a berry has a very...
Chrysanthemum by Twigs Way 2020. Reaktion Books Ltd. Despite being a declared lover of plants, I didn’t include ‘mums’ – as chrysanthemums are commonly known – amongst the plants that I consider most interesting. It was...
Image: “Flower of Nelumbo nucifera, bean of India” by T Voekler. Inspiration for Botany One stories Several years ago I penned a piece giving some insights into the sources for my Plant Cuttings items that appear on the...
Plants that cure: A natural history of the world’s most important medicinal plants* by Elizabeth A Dauncey and Melanie–Jayne R Howes, 2020. Kew Publishing. A few years ago Kew published a book about the deadly...
The Botany of Gin, by Chris Thorogood and Simon Hiscock 2020. Bodleian Library. As one who ‘appreciates’ a well-proportioned gin & tonic, and having previously read Just the Tonic by Kim Walker & Mark Nesbitt, I...
Just the tonic, by Kim Walker and Mark Nesbitt 2019. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. What is: carbonated water, citric acid, sodium citrate, natural quinine, and aspartame? That is the declared list of ingredients in a can...
Fruit from the sands: The Silk Road origins of the food we eat by Robert N Spengler III, 2019. University of California Press. In the UK we are blessed with a wide variety and ready availability of fruits all year round...
Birch by Anna Lewington 2018. Reaktion Books Ltd. “Miserable, naked, hungry”. These three little words are used by the Phytophactor (the ‘nom de blog’ of Illinois State University Professor of Botany Joseph Armstrong)...
Sex on the Kitchen Table: The Romance of Plants and your Food by Norman C Ellstrand 2018. University of Chicago Press. What comes to mind at the mention of sex on the kitchen table? * Perhaps many different things –...