Wily Violets and Underground Orchids: Revelations of a Botanist - Softcover

Bernhardt, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226043665 ISBN 13: 9780226043661

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2003

Synopsis

In this book, Peter Bernhardt takes us on a grand tour of the botanical realm, weaving engaging descriptions of the lovely shapes and intriguing habits of flowering plants with considerations of broader questions, such as why there are only six basic shapes of flowers and why the orchid family is so numerous and so bizarre. Everyone from amateur naturalists and gardeners to plant scientists will find Wily Violets and Underground Orchids a lively guide to botanical lore.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Bernhardt is a professor of biology at St. Louis University and a research associate at both the Missouri Botanical Garden of St. Louis and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Natural Affairs: A Botanist Looks at the Attachments between Plants and People and The Rose's Kiss: A Natural History of Flowers, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

From Publishers Weekly

For nine years an "expatriate botanist" in South America and Australia, Bernhardt, now a botany instructor at St. Louis University, here shares a taste for botanical esoterica--with mixed results. His collection of essays, many published previously in magazines, enjoys the benefit but also bears the brunt of the author's somewhat arcane forays into "orchidelirium" and his unflagging, occasionally tiresome fascination with the pollination of exotic plant species, whether observed in the field or in the pages of Australian children's books (in one of these, "the costumes of minor characters reflect flowering and fruiting fashions within a number of sclerophyll habitats"). Though capable of communicating the botanist's passion for natural wonders, as well as explaining how plants function, the author does not always choose to do so, assuming both a knowledge of and an interest in the mechanics of plant life that many readers will not possess. At his best, however, Bernhardt recounts his "botanical romance" with Kansas grasslands and describes bees who, as pollinators, "appear to be comfortable only when they can visit a violet flower while standing on their heads." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0226043665
• ISBN 13: 9780226043661
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268