The cabaret of plants
Subtitle: forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination
By: Richard Mabey
Edition: First American edition.
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 374
ISBN-13: 9780393239973
Subjects: Botany; History
Description: "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"--
Notes: "First published in Great Britain in 2015 under the title 'The cabaret of plants: botany and the imagination'"--Title-page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-357) and index.
Table of contents: title: The vegetable plot; title: How to see a plant. Symbols from the ice : plants as food and forms ; Bird's-eyes : primulas; title: Wooden manikins : the cults of trees. The cult of celebrity : the Fortingall yew ; The Rorschach tree : baobab ; The big trees : sequoias ; Methuselahs : bristlecones and date palms ; Provenance and extinction : wood's cycad ; From workhorse to green man : the oak; title: Myths of cultivation. The Celtic bush : hazel ; The vegetable lamb : cotton ; Staff of life : maize ; The panacea : ginseng ; The vegetable mudfish : samphire; title: The shock of the real : scientists and Romantics. Life versus entropy : Newton's apple ; Imitations of photosynthesis : mint and cucumber ; The challenge of carnivorous plans : the tipitiwitchet ; Wordsworth's daffodils ; On being pollinated : Keats's forget-me-not; title: New lands, new visions. Jewels of the desert : Francis Masson's starfish and birds of paradise ; Growing together : the East Indian Company's fusion art ; Chiaroscuro : the Impressionists' olive trees ; Local distinctiveness : cornfield tulips and horizontal flax; title: The Victorian plant theatre. 'Vegetable jewellery' : the fern craze ; 'The Queen of Lilies' : Victoria amazonica ; A Sarawakan stinkbomb : the Titan Arum ; Harlequins and mimics : the orchid troupe; title: The real language of plants. The butterfly effect : the moonflower ; The canopy cooperative : air plants and bromeliads : Plant intelligence : mimosa; title: The Tree of After Life.