You can listen to this page as an audio file. Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of world trade, James F Hancock, 2021. CABI. I first encountered James Hancock’s work at the World History Encyclopedia site (e.g. his...
Tag - History
Nigel Chaffey
You can’t beat a good book
You can listen to this page as an audio file. A Cultural History of Plants* by Annette Giesecke (Anthology Editor) and David Mabberley (Anthology Editor), 2022. Bloomsbury Publishing. I like books [actually, I love them...
This plant book is amazing
A book that considers not only how plants have nourished the body, but also the soul.
Sketch by Goethe may be first depiction of intraspecific trait variation
Though the phenomenon was known in Goethe’s time, research didn’t start in earnest for another century.
Erin Zimmerman
Tackling plant blindness: Botany by stealth…
School lessons devoted to plants may be off-putting to those students who are already plant-averse. So, why not smuggle bits of plant information into lessons on topics as diverse as Geography, History, Art &...
One hundred and twenty-five years of the Annals of Botany
By August 2012, the Annals of Botany had been published without a break for 125 years.
annbot
Happy Pumpkin Day to all our American Readers!
Today is a holiday (Thanksgiving) in the USA and most of our American readers will be taking a well earned day off in order to overeat and watch football (as opposed to soccer 😉 ) This afternoon as you slowly realize...
AJ Cann
In praise of Urtica dioica
In the bad old days before Mr Sainsbury and Mr Tesco worked their airmiles magic on the planet, this time of year was known as the “hungry gap” – the time between using up last year’s harvest and...
Go to work on a potato
I didn’t do modern history at school so my impression of the industrial revolution is largely a mish-mash of pop history and some misremembered Industrial Archaeology courses. What I do recall is that the emphasis...
Alun Salt
The fashionably late arrival of cucumbers in Europe #bad11
You might put together a salad from what you’ve grown in your back garden, but it’s a surprisingly cosmopolitan meal. Tomatoes came from Mesoamerica and if you have potato salad, then you have the Incas of South...
The origin of modern Botany and the Infinite Monkey Cage
Some ideas work and some ideas don’t. Sticking Prof Brian Cox and Robin Ince together for half an hour each week works. The Infinite Monkey Cage is their weekly show on Radio 4 (available worldwide as a podcast)...
