A house plant in my living room attacked another plant, wrapping itself around it and killing it. Then another plant tried to sink roots into a neighbor. I began to do a little research, then a lot of research, and learned that plants accomplish amazing feats. They can tell by the angle of the sun when spring is coming, and they can call parasitic wasps to rid themselves of caterpillars. Plants vastly outweigh and outnumber animals, so they run this planet. What if, on another planet, they could think like us… and that’s why I wrote a novel.
If you don’t know much about what plants can do, this is a great place to start.
Learn what a plant sees, smells, and feels. Yes, they can do all that. They know what color shirt you’re wearing. They can smell the warning from a neighbor plant being eaten by a bug. They know when you touch them. They know where they are, and they remember things. Plants are not passive, and they are acutely aware of the world around them.
How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it feel an insect's spindly legs? How do flowers know when it's spring? Can they actually remember the weather? And do they care if you play them Led Zeppelin or Bach? From Darwin's early fascination with stems and vines to "Little Shop of Horrors", we have always marvelled at plant diversity and form. Now, in "What a Plant Knows", the renowned biologist Daniel Chamovitz presents an intriguing and refreshing look at how plants experience the world. Highlighting the latest research in plant science, he takes us into the lives…
Blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias used to think plants were boring. Then, in college, he got a summer job in habitat restoration at an old quarry, and he fell in love.
He learned about the strange ways plants have sex, how they conquer new territories, and what animals they prefer to eat. Most of all, they fight for survival. It’s not exactly war, but there is never enough water, nutrients, space, and light, and there are always predators. Plants meet their challenges in surprising, wonderful ways.
So go outside, he says, and get to know your local plants like you know your friends.
"Matt Candeias succeeds in evoking the wonder of plants with wit and wisdom." James T. Costa, PhD, executive director, Highlands Biological Station and author of Darwin's Backyard
#1 New Release in Nature & Ecology, Plants, Botany, Horticulture, Trees, Biological Sciences, and Nature Writing & Essays
In his debut book, internationally-recognized blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias celebrates the nature of plants and the extraordinary world of plant organisms.
A botanist's defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology…
As a forester in Germany, Peter Wohlleben slowly came to understand the trees he managed as living beings that form a community.
They not only understand their environment and communicate, he says, they work together, nurture their seedlings, and do everything they can to control their environment. They also lead complicated lives and make important decisions such as when to drop their leaves in fall.
Too early and they lose the chance to make more food, facing potential starvation; too late and an early storm could weigh down leaves with snow and ice and break a limb, a potentially fatal injury. Learn how they figure it all out.
"A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement that will make you acknowledge your own entanglement in the ancient and ever-new web of being."--Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben…
Here we step into more controversial territory. Is “plant neurobiology” a thing? That is, can they think? Stefano Mancuso says yes, but not like us.
A plant behaves more like a swarm of insects, and each of its parts and cells reacts to changes in its environment, which affect the other cells around it, and in that way, a decentralized intelligence can reach what looks like a decision. Plants find solutions to the problems of life that would never occur to us, and we can copy them to make our own lives better.
Beautiful illustrations will help you fall in love with plants.
"In this thought-provoking, handsomely illustrated book, Italian neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso considers the fundamental differences between plants and animals and challenges our assumptions about which is the 'higher' form of life." -The Wall Street Journal
"Fascinating...full of optimism...this quick, accessible read will appeal to anyone with interest in how plants continue to surprise us." -Library Journal
Do plants have intelligence? Do they have memory? Are they better problem solvers than people? The Revolutionary Genius of Plants-a fascinating, paradigm-shifting work that upends everything you thought you knew about plants-makes a compelling scientific case that these and other astonishing ideas are all true.…
Now for some fiction about trees, or rather, how people react to threats against trees and are drawn together to defend them.
The interlocking stories of a dozen characters take place over decades, much as a tree grows, connecting each life to lives that last far beyond them. In our world, we often endanger trees without a thought. This novel won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction because it can make you think. “If your mind were only a slightly greener thing,” a tree says early in the novel, “we’d drown you in meaning.”
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
Colonists from Earth arrive on a distant planet where they hope to create an agricultural colony and establish an idealistic, peaceful society. Instead, they discover that the native plants are intelligent, and the plants have their own plans. They can do a lot and, when they need to, they can act ruthlessly – and they see animals, including humans, as their servants. Only mutual communication can forge an alliance.
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
