This is an interesting book. A biologist spends a year going back to the same small patch in a Tennessee forest, and you get a slice of the seasonal things happening there.
He relates a lot of the tales out to the larger world, and you’d be surprised how many stories you end up getting out of small patch of land. I definitely recommend this – it’s not at all dry (which some science based books can be) – the author’s a good story teller.
This is a lovely book of botanical illustration with interesting little anecdotes about the various flowers portrayed.
It covers the whole of the US (and a good chunk of Canada), so it’s necessarily a little broad, but does have an interesting variety of flowers included. It’s a lovely little survey of what’s around in our country for wildflowers.
I’m just fascinated by fungus. They also frustrate me, because unlike wildflowers, they’re hard to identify down to a specific level (and I have a deep seated need organize things). This book reinforces why that’s the case.
If you’ve never studied fungi much, they are just so diverse, and so fascinating. The author’s fascination with fungus shines through here – it’s a really great survey of a world most of us know very little about.
Interesting overview of flowers in the Northeast. It was nice to see some plants outside of normal New England stomping ground.
The author’s chosen some interesting groupings, and I learned quite a bit, some of it seemingly random, from the accompanying essays. This is the kind of book I wish I had the time to go out and research and write.
Really interesting portrait of Antarctica – both the people there (past and present), and the science they’re finding. It’s from 2013, so a smidge dated at this point, but still lots of interesting things covered. You’ll find climate science, meteorology, astronomy, and biology – not to mention how living in such an isolated location impacts the people there. I think anyone could find something of interest in this book.
This is a book of essays written for the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society (back in 2010 – there are some political leaning statements in certain areas that are depressingly dated).
There is a real mix of topics – some are very science oriented, some more concerned with the history of the Society and its fellows, and some that are more critiques (of a variety of things). It’s definitely got variety – I think most people could find something to enjoy and something to hate in this book.
This is an interesting book, based on the author’s trials at Colonial Williamsburg of various plants that were thought to be available for Colonial era gardeners. He talks about where they were found in sources, reasons that they might have been brought over, and even why some of those plants are probably problematic if you’re trying for absolute authenticity. He also includes tips from his trials and what he grew them with.
I did really enjoy the book, but if you want to put it into practical application, you definitely want to live closer to the Mason-Dixon line – there are some lovely plants in here that my zone 5 garden would eat for dinner over the winter.
This is a book about weeds, but if you’ve studied plants at all, you know that weeds are far more than just those plants that invade our gardens. If they’re not natives, there’s probably a reason they’re there, and those stories can be quite interesting.
The author is English, so this is very much about the weeds of England – there’s plenty there that I’m familiar with, but it is a different landscape than my own. I did find it a bit dry at times – not sure if that was influenced by that lack of complete connection.
I picked this up for myself as a souvenir from the Bodleian Library. I don’t normally buy books in England (it’s one thing where the prices are usually far better in the US), but this was unique, and actually published by the Bodleian Library press, so I jumped on it.
It’s a cool little book, using illustrations from John Gerard’s Herball of 1597, which Shakespeare would probably have known, and tying them in with passages from his plays and the longer narrative poems. It’s a nice addition to my gardening book collection.
This book chronicles the natural history movements in the era leading up to Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, and how the advances in technology of that time created a craze for finding new species, and what that meant for science. Darwin certainly wasn’t the only game in town – you meet a number of other naturalists – either in the field, or those gentlemen that funded or ordered species for their homes. It’s a fascinating mix, and after reading this book, I’m frankly amazed that there are any exotic species left after this era – I’m glad we can record things thoroughly with cameras these days.
It was also interesting to see how much dissent existed in these groups, and the various discoveries that built into Darwin’s theory of evolution of are fascinating. I think we’ve forgotten how completely revolutionary (and dangerous, from a religious sense), that idea was when Darwin published – it’s an interesting exercise to see what was happening in the lead up to his publication.
The North Wind and the Sea 