Showing titles in Botany & Plants

Brought to you by Penguin. Set in the valley of the Mesta, one of the oldest inhabited river valleys in Europe and a nexus for wild plant gatherers, Elixir is an unforgettable exploration of the deep connections between people, plants and place Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with...

Brought to you by Penguin. In How Flowers Made Our World, biologist David George Haskell redefines our understanding of flowers, casting them as powerful revolutionaries at the heart of Earth's story. Far from being mere ornaments, flowers have shaped the very fabric of life on our planet. Their...

When our ancestors came down from the trees, they brought the trees with them and remade the world. ‘A stunning book on the incalculable debt humanity owes wood…’ John Carey, The Sunday Times How did the descendants of small arboreal primates manage to stand on our own two feet, become top...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben, read by Thomas Judd. Mother deer that grieve? Horses that feel shame? Squirrels that adopt their grandchildren? We humans tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings...

Brought to you by Penguin. The trailblazing scientist returns with a book that centres nature’s cycles of renewal in the future vision of our forests When the forest breathes out, we breathe in. When the forest thrives, we thrive. The world-renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has...

Stephanie Kaza's heartfelt meditations on the singular presence of trees have helped thousands of listeners feel a sense of spiritual connection to our ancient relatives. Through her attentive, loving encounters with trees, Kaza asks vital questions about what it means to reinhabit place, live simply, and speak from the truth of experience. More pertinent now than ever, her intimate exploration of the lives of individual trees demonstrates the possibility of personal and ecological sanity in our time.

While plants may not have brains or move around as we do, cutting-edge science is revealing that they have astonishing inner worlds of an alternate kind to ours. They can plan ahead, learn and have rich subjective experiences. They can even be put to sleep. If you can look in the right way, a world full of drama unfurls. In Planta Sapiens, Professor Paco Calvo offers a bold new perspective on plant biology and cognitive science. Using the latest scientific findings, Calvo challenges us to make an imaginative leap into a world that is so close and yet so alien.

Brought to you by Penguin. A dazzling scientific detective story from the ecologist who first discovered the hidden language of trees No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees than the world-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard. Now she shares the secrets of a lifetime spent...

Why is it that catching a fish, or simply contemplating catching a fish, can be so thrilling, so captivating? Why is it that what seems such a simple act—that of casting a line and hoping—can feel so rich in mystery? Illuminated by Water is Malachy's personal attempt to understand that freedom and to trace the origins and sources of that sense of wonder. He shares the appeal of fishing, its intense joys and frustrations, the steadying effect it has both at water's edge and in the memory, and the contemplation of nature and landscape that comes with being an angler.

Ancient trees, some over a thousand years old, are dotted around the British Isles, the last survivors of a lost world. Now, new scientific studies of these trees and of fossilised forests and of our oldest wooden artifacts can help us to understand the many woodlands that have disappeared from...

The bestselling author of Foraging With Kids shows us how to gather and use traditional herbs to boost wellbeing and scatter a little magic over our lives. Discover the ancient Nine Herbs Spell and learn to create your own! Forage in the footsteps of the witches who gathered plants for the medieval Nine Herbs Spell, and explore the traditional healing powers of the herbs all around you.

In this wide-ranging and accessible new book, biologist-turned-perfumer Elise Vernon Pearlstine turns our human-centered perception of fragrance on its head and investigates plants' evolutionary reasons for creating aromatic molecules. Delving into themes of spirituality, wealth, power, addiction, royalty, fantasy, and more, Pearlstine uncovers the natural history of aromatic substances and their intersection with human culture and civilization.

The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet. It could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In...

Cacti are some of the most remarkable plants on Earth—masters of survival, architects of adaptation, and quiet heroes of some of the harshest environments imaginable. Yet for many people, the word “cactus” evokes only a single image: a tall, green, spiky shape standing alone in a blazing desert. Secrets of the Cactus reveals just how incomplete that picture truly is. Behind every spine, rib, and bloom lies a story of resilience, evolution, beauty, and surprising complexity.

enguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Man Who Made Things Out Of Trees, written and read by Robert Penn. Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of...

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.

Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?

Dr Rosa is no stranger to the Amazon. Growing up with the rainforest as her back garden, she learnt the lessons of the rainforest from her grandmother, a native healer in natural medicine. In this debut, you'll learn about Dr Rosa's journeys in the Amazon: her treacherous encounters with a boiling river, her conservation work with stingless bees, her experience of taking ayahuasca as a natural psychedelic—and all the amazing biodiversity of the rainforest.

Bloomsbury presents One Thousand Shades of Green written and read by Mike Dilger. ‘A cracking read.’ IOLO WILLIAMS ‘What an incredible achievement!’ ALISON STEADMAN ‘An inspirational odyssey.’ NICK BAKER 'Immediately accessible.' BBC COUNTRYFILE Mike Dilger's nationwide quest to find...