Stefano Mancuso

Plants are a form of life that is different, neither simpler or or more developed, than animals
The author is a plant biologist, from Italy, and the book is translated from Italian. His theme is the survivability and dispersion of plants into every possible environment. The book is composed of short chapters each describing a different history or plant that the author has met. Hibakujumoku is the name the Japanese give trees and plants that survived the Hiroshima bomb, and the area around Chernobyl is now a forest preserve, with the abandoned town of Pripyat now overrun by plants. The water hyacinth is considered the most invasive species in the world, and it now chokes many rivers in the southern US. A bill was put before Congress in 1910 to import hippopotami to eat the plant. Plants grown from seeds stored for hundreds of years, or from seeds frozen for thousands. One section has stories of single trees in inhospitable environments, like the spruce on Campbell Island south of New Zealand, or the acacia in the middle of the Sahara. The book is brief, nicely bound and trimmed, illustrated by pointless abstract watercolors of invented maps (watercolors of the plants described would have been far better). I enjoyed it, and I am trying to suggest to my gardener wife that she read it.… (more)