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A review by sandyd
Anatomy Of A Rose: Exploring The Secret Life Of Flowers by Sharman Apt Russell
4.0
This was a rather poetically written short volume on botany - specifically, the botany of flowers. Nice chapters on scent, pollen, trapping insects, classification (a la Linnaeus), evolution, etc.
Here's a fun sentence about pollen that illustrates Russell's style:
"On the very nicest of days, when the air is slightly fresh, when the sun is pleasantly warm, when trouble-some insects have not yet appeared or are already gone, we live and breathe in an effluvia of male sex cells." (p. 93).
However, she's wrong about the pollen found on the Neandertal skeletons in Iraq....it was said in 1975 that it was evidence for burial with flowers (cited in the endnotes), but the rebuttal (from the 90's) showing that the pollen was just in the water and sediment that covered the skeletons never was as well popularized. Just FYI. Just not as cool a story as the flowers, I guess.
Here's a fun sentence about pollen that illustrates Russell's style:
"On the very nicest of days, when the air is slightly fresh, when the sun is pleasantly warm, when trouble-some insects have not yet appeared or are already gone, we live and breathe in an effluvia of male sex cells." (p. 93).
However, she's wrong about the pollen found on the Neandertal skeletons in Iraq....it was said in 1975 that it was evidence for burial with flowers (cited in the endnotes), but the rebuttal (from the 90's) showing that the pollen was just in the water and sediment that covered the skeletons never was as well popularized. Just FYI. Just not as cool a story as the flowers, I guess.