What Have Plants Ever Done For Us

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What Have Plants Ever Done for Us?

Stephen Harris
What Have Plants Ever Done for Us Book PDF

Author : Stephen Harris
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : History
ISBN : UCSD:31822042241638

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What Have Plants Ever Done for Us? by Stephen Harris Pdf

When did the British Government become the world's largest drugs pusher? What tree is frequently used to treat cancer? Which everyday condiment is the most widely traded spice on the planet?Plants are an indispensable part of our everyday life. From the coffee bush and grass for cattle which give us milk for our cappuccinos to the rubber tree which produces tyres for our cars, our lives are inextricably linked to the world of plants.Taking us on a chronological journey, Stephen Harris identifies fifty plants that have been key to the development of the Western world, discussing trade, politics, medicine, travel and chemistry along the way.Plants have provided paper and ink, chemicals that could kill or cure, vital sustenance and stimulants. Some, such as barley, have been staples from earliest times; others, such as oil palm, are newcomers to Western industry. Moreover, with time, uses change: beets, which have been used variously as a treatment for leprosy, source of sugar and animal feed, are now showing potential as biofuels. What may the future hold for mandrake or woad?We remain dependent on plants for our food, our fuel and our medicines. Their effects on our lives, as the stories in this wide-ranging and engaging book demonstrate, continue to be profound, and often unpredictable.

Plant Tribe

Igor Josifovic,Judith De Graaff
Plant Tribe Book PDF

Author : Igor Josifovic,Judith De Graaff
Publisher : Abrams
Page : 698 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Gardening
ISBN : 9781683358763

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Plant Tribe by Igor Josifovic,Judith De Graaff Pdf

The bestselling authors of Urban Jungle delve into the many ways that nurturing plants helps nurture the soul This new book by the authors of the bestselling Urban Jungle addresses the life-changing magic of living with and caring for plants. Aimed at a wider audience than typical houseplant books, each chapter combines easily digestible plant knowledge, style guidance via real home interiors, and inspiring advice for using plants to increase energy, creativity, and well-being and to attract love and prosperity. Also included: real-world @urbanjungleblog followers’ FAQs; a section on plants and pets; and plant care for the different stages of a houseplant’s life. The focus is on using plants to raise the positive energy of every room in the house and to live happily ever after with plants.

Plants: A Very Short Introduction

Timothy Walker
Plants A Very Short Introduction Book PDF

Author : Timothy Walker
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-04-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780191634000

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Plants: A Very Short Introduction by Timothy Walker Pdf

Plants form a fundamental element of the biosphere, and the evolution of plants has directly affected the evolution of animal life and the evolution of the Earth's climate. Plants have also become essential to humans not only in the form of cereal crops, fruit, and vegetables, but in their many other uses in wood and paper, and in providing medicines. Their aesthetic importance too in our parks and gardens as well as in wildflower meadows and great forests should not be underestimated. In this Very Short Introduction Timothy Walker, Director of the Botanical Gardens in Oxford, provides a concise account of the nature of plants, their variety, their evolution, and their importance and uses, stressing the need and efforts for their conservation for future generations. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask

Mary Siisip Geniusz
Plants Have So Much to Give Us All We Have to Do Is Ask Book PDF

Author : Mary Siisip Geniusz
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2015-06-22
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781452944715

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Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask by Mary Siisip Geniusz Pdf

Mary Siisip Geniusz has spent more than thirty years working with, living with, and using the Anishinaabe teachings, recipes, and botanical information she shares in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask. Geniusz gained much of the knowledge she writes about from her years as an oshkaabewis, a traditionally trained apprentice, and as friend to the late Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe medicine woman from the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan and a scholar, teacher, and practitioner in the field of native ethnobotany. Keewaydinoquay published little in her lifetime, yet Geniusz has carried on her legacy by making this body of knowledge accessible to a broader audience. Geniusz teaches the ways she was taught—through stories. Sharing the traditional stories she learned at Keewaydinoquay’s side as well as stories from other American Indian traditions and her own experiences, Geniusz brings the plants to life with narratives that explain their uses, meaning, and history. Stories such as “Naanabozho and the Squeaky-Voice Plant” place the plants in cultural context and illustrate the belief in plants as cognizant beings. Covering a wide range of plants, from conifers to cattails to medicinal uses of yarrow, mullein, and dandelion, she explains how we can work with those beings to create food, simple medicines, and practical botanical tools. Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask makes this botanical information useful to native and nonnative healers and educators and places it in the context of the Anishinaabe culture that developed the knowledge and practice.

Plants and the Human Brain

David O. Kennedy
Plants and the Human Brain Book PDF

Author : David O. Kennedy
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2014-04
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780199914012

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Plants and the Human Brain by David O. Kennedy Pdf

Discusses how plant-based chemicals affect and interact with the human brain and its evolution.

This Is Your Mind on Plants

Michael Pollan
This Is Your Mind on Plants Book PDF

Author : Michael Pollan
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780593296912

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This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan Pdf

The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

Fifty Plants That Changed the Course of History

Bill Laws
Fifty Plants That Changed the Course of History Book PDF

Author : Bill Laws
Publisher : Firefly Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2015-08-18
Category : History
ISBN : 1770855882

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Fifty Plants That Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws Pdf

The fascinating stories of the plants that changed civilizations.

The History of the World in 100 Plants

Simon Barnes
The History of the World in 100 Plants Book PDF

Author : Simon Barnes
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 439 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2022-10-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781398505490

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The History of the World in 100 Plants by Simon Barnes Pdf

From the author of The History of the World in 100 Animals, a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week, comes an inspirational new book that looks at the 100 plants that have had the greatest impact on humanity, stunningly illustrated throughout. As humans, we hold the planet in the palms of ours hands. But we still consume the energy of the sun in the form of food. The sun is available for consumption because of plants. Plants make food from the sun by the process of photosynthesis; nothing else in the world can do this. We eat plants, or we do so at second hand, by eating the eaters of plants. Plants give us food. Plants take in carbon dioxide and push out oxygen: they give us the air we breathe, direct the rain that falls and moderate the climate. Plants also give us shelter, beauty, comfort, meaning, buildings, boats, containers, musical instruments, medicines and religious symbols. We use flowers for love, we use flowers for death. The fossils of plants power our industries and our transport. Across history we have used plants to store knowledge, to kill, to fuel wars, to change our state of consciousness, to indicate our status. The first gun was a plant, we got fire from plants, we have enslaved people for the sake of plants. We humans like to see ourselves as a species that has risen above the animal kingdom, doing what we will with the world. But we couldn’t live for a day without plants. Our past is all about plants, our present is all tied up with plants; and without plants there is no future. From the mighty oak to algae, from cotton to coca here are a hundred reasons why.

Pretty Tricky

Etta Kaner
Pretty Tricky Book PDF

Author : Etta Kaner
Publisher : Owlkids
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2020-09-15
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 177147369X

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Pretty Tricky by Etta Kaner Pdf

A guide to how plants use trickery to survive and thrive

In Defense of Plants

Matt Candeias
In Defense of Plants Book PDF

Author : Matt Candeias
Publisher : Mango Media Inc.
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2021-03-16
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781642504545

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In Defense of Plants by Matt Candeias Pdf

The Study of Plants in a Whole New Light “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 of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection. Using gardening, houseplants, and examples of plants around you, In Defense of Plants changes your relationship with the world from the comfort of your windowsill. The ruthless, horny, and wonderful nature of plants. Understand how plants evolve and live on Earth with a never-before-seen look into their daily drama. Inside, Candeias explores the incredible ways plants live, fight, have sex, and conquer new territory. Whether a blossoming botanist or a professional plant scientist, In Defense of Plants is for anyone who sees plants as more than just static backdrops to more charismatic life forms. In this easily accessible introduction to the incredible world of plants, you’ll find: • Fantastic botanical histories and plant symbolism • Passionate stories of flora diversity and scientific names of plant organisms • Personal tales of plantsman discovery through the study of plants If you enjoyed books like The Botany of Desire, What a Plant Knows, or The Soul of an Octopus, then you’ll love In Defense of Plants.

Plants as Persons

Matthew Hall
Plants as Persons Book PDF

Author : Matthew Hall
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2011-05-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781438434308

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Plants as Persons by Matthew Hall Pdf

Plants are people too? No, but in this work of philosophical botany Matthew Hall challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants, arguing that they are other-than-human persons. Plants constitute the bulk of our visible biomass, underpin all natural ecosystems, and make life on Earth possible. Yet plants are considered passive and insensitive beings rightly placed outside moral consideration. As the human assault on nature continues, more ethical behavior toward plants is needed. Hall surveys Western, Eastern, Pagan, and Indigenous thought as well as modern science for attitudes toward plants, noting the particular resources for plant personhood and those modes of thought which most exclude plants. The most hierarchical systems typically put plants at the bottom, but Hall finds much to support a more positive view of plants. Indeed, some indigenous animisms actually recognize plants as relational, intelligent beings who are the appropriate recipeints of care and respect. New scientific findings encourage this perspective, revealing that plants possess many of the capacities of sentience and mentality traditionally denied them.

The Cabaret of Plants

Richard Mabey
The Cabaret of Plants Book PDF

Author : Richard Mabey
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2015-10-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781847654014

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The Cabaret of Plants by Richard Mabey Pdf

In The Cabaret of Plants, Mabey explores the plant species which have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty and belief. Picked from every walk of life, they encompass crops, weeds, medicines, religious gathering-places and a water lily named after a queen. Beginning with pagan cults and creation myths, the cultural significance of plants has burst upwards, sprouting into forms as diverse as the panacea (the cure-all plant ginseng, a single root of which can cost up to $10,000), Newton's apple, the African 'vegetable elephant' or boabab - and the mystical, night-flowering Amazonian cactus, the moonflower. Ranging widely across science, art and cultural history, poetry and personal experience, Mabey puts plants centre stage, and reveals a true botanical cabaret, a world of tricksters, shape-shifters and inspired problem-solvers, as well as an enthralled audience of romantics, eccentric amateur scientists and transgressive artists. The Cabaret of Plants celebrates the idea that plants are not simply 'the furniture of the planet', but vital, inventive, individual beings worthy of respect - and that to understand this may be the best way of preserving life together on Earth.

The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination

Richard Mabey
The Cabaret of Plants Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination Book PDF

Author : Richard Mabey
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2016-01-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393248777

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The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination by Richard Mabey Pdf

"Highly entertaining…Mabey gets us to look at life from the plants’ point of view." —Constance Casey, New York Times The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey. A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death. Writing in a celebrated style that the Economist calls “delightful and casually learned,” Mabey takes readers from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists such as da Vinci, Keats, Darwin, and van Gogh and across nearly 40,000 years of human history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art and the earliest representations of the Garden of Eden; Newton’s apple and gravity, Priestley’s sprig of mint and photosynthesis, and Wordsworth’s daffodils; the history of cultivated plants such as maize, ginseng, and cotton; and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of America. Complemented by dozens of full-color illustrations, The Cabaret of Plants is the magnum opus of a great naturalist and an extraordinary exploration of the deeply interwined history of humans and the natural world.

The Humane Gardener

Nancy Lawson
The Humane Gardener Book PDF

Author : Nancy Lawson
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2017-04-18
Category : Gardening
ISBN : 9781616896171

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The Humane Gardener by Nancy Lawson Pdf

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

Do Plants Know Math?

Stéphane Douady,Christophe Golé,Jacques Dumais,Nancy Pick
Do Plants Know Math Book PDF

Author : Stéphane Douady,Christophe Golé,Jacques Dumais,Nancy Pick
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2024-09-10
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 9780691158655

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Do Plants Know Math? by Stéphane Douady,Christophe Golé,Jacques Dumais,Nancy Pick Pdf

A breathtakingly illustrated look at botanical spirals and the scientists who puzzled over them Charles Darwin was driven to distraction by plant spirals, growing so exasperated that he once begged a friend to explain the mystery “if you wish to save me from a miserable death.” The legendary naturalist was hardly alone in feeling tormented by these patterns. Plant spirals captured the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci and became Alan Turing’s final obsession. This book tells the stories of the physicists, mathematicians, and biologists who found themselves magnetically drawn to Fibonacci spirals in plants, seeking an answer to why these beautiful and seductive patterns occur in botanical forms as diverse as pine cones, cabbages, and sunflowers. Do Plants Know Math? takes you down through the centuries to explore how great minds have been captivated and mystified by Fibonacci patterns in nature. It presents a powerful new geometrical solution, little known outside of scientific circles, that sheds light on why regular and irregular spiral patterns occur. Along the way, the book discusses related plant geometries such as fractals and the fascinating way that leaves are folded inside of buds. Your neurons will crackle as you begin to see the connections. This book will inspire you to look at botanical patterns—and the natural world itself—with new eyes. Featuring hundreds of gorgeous color images, Do Plants Know Math? includes a dozen creative hands-on activities and even spiral-plant recipes, encouraging readers to explore and celebrate these beguiling patterns for themselves.