Plant Science

Now, the choice is yours. Would you rather be covered in feathers or scales? Would you want to be an oak tree or a giant water lily? Would you choose to talk to animals or understand plants? It's your turn to pick this or that!

In this wide-ranging and accessible new book, biologist-turned-perfumer Elise Vernon Pearlstine turns our human-centered perception of fragrance on its head and investigates plants' evolutionary reasons for creating aromatic molecules. Delving into themes of spirituality, wealth, power, addiction, royalty, fantasy, and more, Pearlstine uncovers the natural history of aromatic substances and their intersection with human culture and civilization.

Best-selling author and environmentalist Jonathan Drori follows in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg as he tells the stories of 80 magnificent trees from all over the globe. In Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori uses plant science to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life, from the romantic to the regrettable. From the trees of Britain, to India's sacred banyan tree, they offer us sanctuary and inspiration - not to mention the raw materials for everything from aspirin to maple syrup.

We all take for granted the idea that being in nature makes us feel better. But if you were a skeptic who wanted hard scientific evidence for this idea, where would you look? And how would that evidence be gathered? It wasn't until Dr. Kathy Willis was asked to contribute to an international project looking for the societal benefits we gain from plants that she stumbled across a study that radically changed the way she saw the natural world. In the study there was clear proof that patients recovering from gall bladder operations recovered more quickly if they were looking at trees.

The idea that plants have a mind of their own has been a prominent feature of some Indigenous narratives, literary works, and philosophical discourses. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition similarly highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants offers an accessible account of the idea of “the plant mind” by bringing together short essays and poems on plants and their interactions with humans.

In No Meat Required, author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today.

Curious listeners want to know how things work. Easy-to-understand explanations explain how water gets to and from our homes and describes the role of the community workers who make it all possible.

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

The first mass dungeon break in history grows nearer. Nick and his growing guild are training against time to be ready to stop this “Red Death” before it ever happens, but no one outside Nick’s closest circle knows this true purpose behind their intense tactical team-combat exercises. The secret weighs heavily on Nick as he considers revealing the truth of his regression to his found family, the Walters, and his other allies, hoping they will believe him and still support him when he needs them most.

Leading medical authority Neal Barnard, MD, FACC, shows you how to put the power of a vegan diet to work with an easy, step-by-step approach. Many are looking to adopt a more healthful diet but may have questions, like: How do I plan a vegan meal? Is protein an issue? How do I make it work if I...

From butterflies to sunflowers, each living thing follows a life cycle. Uncover the facts of both animal and plant life cycles, and learn how people's actions can impact them.

For Nick Gallows, time is everything, his most important resource as he tries to prevent the Apocalypse. Yet, time is also an enemy, a clock ticking down to the death of humanity—and faster than Nick knows. The clandestine Forebears of Ingenga snake their shadowy tendrils through every echelon of society in an effort to expedite the end, and after Nick foiled their plans once, their crosshairs have settled on him and his burgeoning guild.

Caring for plants can be a meditative practice, even a form of self-care. Tanner Mitchell knows this firsthand. As the owner of a beloved plant store he opened with his wife in 2020, Tanner has seen how house plants bring so much comfort and joy to people, regardless of what else is going on in their lives or in the larger world. With his kids’ encouragement, Tanner began posting plant care tips on TikTok and soon, he found his calling.

In both history and fiction, some of the most dramatic, notorious deaths have been through poisonings. Concealed and deliberate, it's a crime that requires advance planning and that for many centuries could go virtually undetected. And yet there is a fine line between healing and killing: The difference lies only in the dosage!

Discover a groundbreaking new way of eating that can reverse inflammation, heal your gut, and improve your overall health, fitness and athletic performance—in just one week—while setting you on the path to easy, sustainable weight loss for life! Journalist and bestselling author Stephen Perrine reveals how in his intensely researched, yet simple and engaging new book, The Full-Body Fat Fix.

This eye-opening book offers a "clear and captivating" (Dr. Kris Verburgh​)scientific deep dive into how plants and animals have already unlocked the secrets to immortality–and the lessons they hold for us all. Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of...

Wir stellen uns Bäume als eine passive Spezies vor, die an einen Ort gebunden ist, dabei gestalten sie ihre Umwelt aktiv. Sie zerkleinern Felsen, verbreitern die Küsten, vergiften gezielt Tiere, kontrollieren Wasserkreisläufe und lösen sogar Waldbrände aus. Seit prähistorischen Zeiten beeinflussen Bäume so ganze Ökosysteme, das Klima und schließlich auch uns Menschen maßgeblich. Die britische Biochemikerin und Journalistin Harriet Rix nimmt uns mit auf eine atemberaubende Weltreise zu Wäldern in Kalifornien, Syrien, Brasilien, im Himalaya, oder auf La Gomera.

The inside story of how nuclear energy—long considered scary, controversial, and even apocalyptic—has become the hot topic of the climate debate, and perhaps a vital power source of the future On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last...

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath - known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwigara - has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. Salmon teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths.

In The Plant Hunter, Dr. Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to tell us the extraordinary story of her own journey. Traveling by canoe, ATV, mule, airboat, and on foot, she has conducted field research in the flooded forests of the remote Amazon, the murky swamps of southern Florida, the rolling hills of central Italy, isolated mountaintops in Albania and Kosovo, and volcanic isles arising out of the Mediterranean - all in search of natural compounds, long-known to traditional healers, that could help save us all from the looming crisis of untreatable superbugs.