BBB - Best Botany Books

I'm interested in seeing the group's recommendations for books on botany or plant-related environmental science.

Among my favorites are:

Seeing Trees by Nancy Ross Hugo
In Praise of Plants by Francis Hallé
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
How Plants Work by Linda Chalker-Scott (with special kudos for book design)
The Nature of Plants: An Introduction to How Plants Work by Craig N. Huegel
The Road of a Naturalist by Donald Culross Peatty
What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin

Please help me expand my to-read list!

Thanks. I like this list. The latest book in that subject area I was impressed by is Rewilding: the radical new science of ecological recovery. George Monbiot's similar recent book is Feral.

Ooh. I read Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm and really enjoyed it. I'll add Jepson's book to my wishlist. Thanks.

UR welcome. We in southern California are bracing for upwards of a foot of rain in the next day or so. I'll be back on this group in a few days if our family's home still has the electric power on.

Six inches of rain so far, + we still have electric power. One of the US leading virologists recommends the new 500+-page book How Life Works by Philip Ball:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo207403562.html

Due to its length, I guess most would view it as an academic book, but sometimes I prefer a long book if that what it takes to avoid "dumbing down" the subject of interest.

>5 MaureenRoy: Thanks for the heads-up on that one. I have added it to my wishlist.

Treebeard_404 and everyone, is the following BBC News botany update accurate, or is there more on this story? Link:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68497720.amp

The story is also reported in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/09/seedlings-from-felled-sycamore-g...

... if you can really call it a story. Okay, felling the original tree was a bit of mindless vandalism, but (i) the sycamore is native to central, eastern and southern Europe, but not to Britain, but it has been such an aggressively invasive alien it's practically everywhere "to the detriment of native species" (The Woodland Trust), and (ii) 'Sycamore Gap' on Hadrian's Wall is a miniscule part of the great green desert of upland Britain kept treeless by the ubiquitous "white woolly maggots" (sheep).

As far as I'm concerned, this is all an exercise in sentimentalism at best, media click-bait content creation at worst.

Cynfelyn and everyone, thank you for this analysis. So the sycamore is hardly endangered, interesting. Your example of the ecological problem created when many flocks of sheep are maintained goes a long way toward explaining what has diminished Great Britain's ancient forests, and possibly some of Ireland's original oak forests as well.

My family and I have been vegetarians for decades, one of us for 50 years. We are therefore not meat eaters, and in coastal southern California, I see no need to use wool products, either.

Nature on Earth is already aggressive enough as it is. I am reminded of that these last 4+ years each time I read updates from the virology community.

I'm just giggling about the notion of a "high security greenhouse".

The advantage of natural forest over tree plantations:

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-approach-reforestation-regeneration.html

A new kind of wood, they say:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2442082-we-have-discovered-an-entirely-new-...

CNN explains why tree choices for paper products are magnifying wildfire risks:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/08/climate/portugal-fires-eucalyptus-paper/index.htm...

The author of a forthcoming book on the storage of plant seeds reviews common misconceptions about one seed vault:

https://www.popsci.com/environment/svalbard-global-seed-vault/

California's Joshua trees:

https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/california-plan-to-save-joshua-trees