Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0738206695, Paperback)

The flower, paleontologists tell us, is an ancient innovation in the endless struggle of adaptation and survival; the earliest fossil flowers date to some 120 million years ago, long after the arrival of other forms of plant life (and, for that matter, insects). Their arrival heralded a new way for plants to go forth and multiply that was so successful that countless animal and insect species now depend on flowers for food, and flowering plants have spread across the face of the earth.

"We know that flowers are beautiful," writes essayist Sharman Apt Russell in this lyrical exploration of the flowering world. "We forget that they are also essential." In fact, the more we learn about them, the more essential the 250,000 known species of flowering plants appear to be to modern life. Scientists are only now beginning to understand the complex role of flowers in ecosystems, and their studies have turned up surprising discoveries (such as the fact that a single flower can produce more than a hundred chemical compounds, and that plants like the alpine pennycress and sunflower can remove toxic chemicals from earth and water). Russell takes us to laboratories and academic conferences, as well as sun-drenched fields and greenhouses, to relate the science and lore of flowers. She also warns that, with one in three species in the United States alone already at risk, flowers may well prove to be among the first victims of a mounting wave of extinctions.

Russell's poetic book complements standards such as Donald Culross Peattie's Flowering Earth and Peter Tompkins's Secret Life of Plants. Fans of botany, ecology, and plain good writing will find much of value in its pages. --Gregory McNamee