This book accompanies the landmark television series Kingdom of Plants 3D: With David Attenborough. In the last 500 million years, plants have undertaken an epic journey that has not only spanned the ages but has altered the very make-up of the planet. It was a journey that began in a dark and barren world, and has culminated in a planet that is draped in rich colours, and overflowing with a…
Improved detection and monitoring of biodiversity is critical at a time when Earth’s biodiversity loss due to human activities is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. We face the largest loss of biodiversity in human history, a loss which has been called the “sixth mass extinction” (Leakey 1996; Kolbert 2014), given that its mag-nitude is in proportion to past…
Umberto Quattrocchi has brought us some amazing and useful works through the various dictionaries that he has compiled. This time it is for two very important plant families the palms and the cycads that are synthesized here in these two volumes. Each entry is fascinating not just for the botany and full nomenclature of the plant species but for all the associated uses, folklore and interaction…
In 2018, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium published a reference genome sequence for bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The landmark achievement was the culmination of a thirteen-year international effort focused on the production of a genome sequence linked to genotypic/phenotypic maps to advance understanding of traits an…
During the first half of the nineteenth century, some fundamental insights into pollen morphology and physiology were achieved. Purkinje made the first attempt for a palynological terminology by classifying pollen based on their morphology (Purkinje 1830). Wodehouse (1935) pointed out that “Purkinje’s system of nomenclature deserved much more attention than was ever given …
Behavior is a key concept in numerous fields of study: psychology, ethology, but also in the biology of organisms. It does not cause much surprise that dolphins, chimpanzees or rats display rational behavior – after all, they are not so different from us. But what about the organisms we deem “simpler”? Or even brainless organisms like plants? Do t…
t present, as estimated by FAO, the world produces more or less sufficient food to meet the needs of world population and maintains sufficient food stock to cover nearly 25% of estimated annual utilization. Despite the positive situation on the sup-ply side, FAO’s estimation in 2014–2016 indicated that, globally, 795 million peo-ple were unable to meet their dietary energy requ…
Advances made during decades of spaceflight experimentation have identified critical gaps in our understanding of the role of gravity and the spaceflight environment on plant biology at the cellular, tissue, whole plant, and community levels. The International Space Station is a unique platform where reduced gravity can be used to probe and dissect biological mechanisms in plants for underst…
Dark Botany activates the material and sensorial wonder of plants—their energy, their mysterious allure, their capacities and skills, their independent might. In this Wunderkammer of critical plant studies essays and plant+artworks, the herbarium emerges as a site of multiple materialities and reflexive forms of counter-narrative. Herbaria specimens come alive as assemblages, telling truths a…
errestrial life forms made their move on land about 400 mil-lion years ago. Plants crossed the barrier between life in water to life in the atmosphere. With the invention of stable stems, plants overcame hydrological and mechanical problems. The construction of plant stems is the focus of this book. It demon-strates that nature created a framework in which plant stems…