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Loading... A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants (original 2014; edition 2014)by Ruth Kassinger
Work InformationA Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants by Ruth Kassinger (2014)
   Books Read in 2019 (2,049) No current Talk conversations about this book.  rhowens | Nov 26, 2019 |   > … I used only clear lip gloss. All of which is to say that in high school chemistry, when it came time to use a pipette to titrate a fluid, I was in trouble. or > … Not until their mid-seventies did my mother's arthritis finally end their peregrinations, and they moved to a condo—with no yard—in Fort Myers. All of which is to say, I didn't know if my mother's curiosity about a cleverly constructed cocktail tree would trump her lack of interest in plant care. I think that if your stories all end up with "all of which is to say," then maybe you can edit them all out. Here's a gem of an explanation, showing about the level of science Kassinger writes: > Consider photosynthesis to be a pinball machine. Even if we animals somehow acquired the cabinet (the chloroplast with its stroma and thylakoids), we would still lack the flippers, bumpers, and springs (the enzymes) as well as any written instructions (the DNA) to play a game. Disappointing. (  ) breic | Jul 27, 2019 | jhawn | Jul 31, 2017 | of Plants ” by Ruth Kassinger Today we take for granted that leaves take in carbon dioxide and roots absorb specific nutrients, and plants, gulp, reproduce sexually. However, that was not the case for most of the time man has been interested in plants. It is now difficult to comprehend how little was known about plant physiology until relatively recently - myths abounded and frequently suppressed rational thought for centuries. Plants were, for example, long thought to have stomachs with which to digest their food, and as for sex, well... The reader is taken on a fascinating journey of ingenious botanical discovery - from public human anatomy lessons at the University of Bolgna in the 17th century to 21st - century laboratory gene splicing to create perennial versions of species (perenniality). To quote from the dust cover: “Kassinger retraces the progress of the first botanists - including a melancholy Italian anatomist, a renegade French surgeon, a stuttering English minister, an obsessive German schoolteacher, and Charles Darwin, who banished the myths and misunderstandings.” Kassinger goes out into the world as well, visiting modern gardens, farms and labs to discover the science behind extraordinary plants like one ton pumpkins, truly black petunias, ferns that eat the arsenic in contaminated soils, biofuel grass that grows 10 feet tall, and the world’s only photosynthesizing animal.” The author conveys an extensive range of botanical information and detail in a chatty, often humorous and very digestible way and frequently intersperses the dialogue with personal anecdotes. Extensive notes and sources, bibliography and index are included. This compendium is very well researched and makes a compelling read - you will find it hard to put it down. It is available in the club library and the Fraser Valley system, which includes White Rock, but not currently in the Surrey system. SSGC | Oct 22, 2016 | no reviews | add a review
Distinctions
"A witty and engaging history of the first botanists, interwoven with stories of today's extraordinary plants found in the garden and the labIn Paradise Under Glass, Ruth Kassinger recounts with grace and humor her journey from brown thumb to green, sharing the lessons that she learned from building a home conservatory in the wake of a devastating personal crisis. In A Garden of Marvels, she extends the story. "This book was born of a murder, a murder I committed," she begins. The victim was a kumquat tree. Though she diligently did her best--watering, fertilizing, repotting, and pruning--the plant turned brown and brittle. Why did the kumquat die when other plants in the garden that received the same attention thrived? she wondered. It was an experience that offered invaluable insight. While she knew the basic rules of caring for indoor plants, Kassinger realized that she understood very little about plant physiology--how roots, stems, leaves, and flowers actually function. Determined not to repeat her failure, she set out to learn the fundamentals of botany in order to become a better gardener. A Garden of Marvels is the story of her wise and enchanting odyssey to discover the secret life of plants. Kassinger retraces the progress of the first botanists--including a melancholy Italian anatomist, a renegade French surgeon, a stuttering English minister, an obsessive German schoolteacher, and Charles Darwin--who banished myths and misunderstandings and discovered that flowers have sex, leaves eat air, roots choose their food, and hormones make morning glories climb fence posts. She goes out into the world as well, visiting modern gardens, farms, and labs to discover the science behind extraordinary plants like one-ton pumpkins, truly black petunias, ferns that eat the arsenic in contaminated soil, biofuel grass that grows twelve feet tall, and the world's only photosynthesizing animal. Kassinger also introduces us to modern scientific research that offers hope.
for combatting climate change and alleviating world hunger. She then transfers her insights to her own garden, where she nurtures a "cocktail" tree that bears five kinds of fruit, cures an ailing Buddha's Hand plant with beneficial fungi, and gets a tree to text her when it's thirsty. Intertwining personal anecdotes, accessible science, and little-known history, A Garden of Marvels takes us on an eye-opening journey into Kassinger's garden--and yours--offering us a new appreciation of this exquisite gift of nature: "Our garden is more than a marvel. It's as close to a miracle as there is on Earth.""--
"In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, the author of Paradise Under Glass gives us a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today's extraordinary plants found in the garden and the lab"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)580.92Natural sciences and mathematics Plants Botany Biography; History By Place BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.79)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Kassinger has done her research, for sure. She describes not only the methods and discoveries in the history of botany, but also the personalities and brief biographies of the researchers who made those discoveries. She also relates the often entertaining misconceptions that preceded each discovery. In several cases, the newly found truth about how a plant works wasn’t really any more reasonable than the initial conjecture; in fact, plant scientists often found that their discoveries met with resistance from believers of the established explanation (surprised?).
A prime example is the borametz, or the vegetable lamb, which Kassinger describes near the beginning of the book. For decades and decades, there was no reason to believe that this plant - a tiny lamb growing on a stalk - wasn’t real in some other part of the world from where people were hearing about it. The author explains how the myth was debunked, but reminds us that the oddness of a supposition is not a scientific criterion for rejecting it: later in the book, she tells of the photosynthesizing sea slug, an actual creature that seems to straddle the border between the plant and animal kingdoms. And she also presents the at-least-as-strange-as-fiction cocktail tree, a citrus tree which has been grafted with multiple cuttings so that from one trunk, it grows multiple species of citrus fruits.
Probably don’t bother with this one unless you’re into plants. But if you’re into plants, go ahead and bother with it. (