"THAT spark of dormant life may be hidden and hard to measure, but mother plants will do almost anything to protect it," writes conservation biologist Thor Hansen, describing the marvels that are seeds.
This post is entirely taken from the New Scientist review ... see link below.
- Book information
- The Triumph of Seeds: How grains, nuts, kernels, pulses, and pips conquered the plant kingdom and shaped human history by Thor Hansen
- Published by: Basic Books
- Price: $26.99
The Triumph of Seeds: Our huge debt to tiny marvels - life - 19 April 2015 - New Scientist
"With light, engaging prose Hansen shows how the little spheroids we tip out of a packet are in fact supremely elegant genetic time capsules. The Triumph of Seeds takes you past the casing into the extraordinary inner working of objects without which our landscapes, dinner plates and gardens would be unrecognisable. You will never be able to look at an orange pip or a sunflower seed in the same way again.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Seeding the future"
Adrian Barnett is a rainforest ecologist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus
Seeds have many cunning survival strategies, including desiccation (Image: Frederique Jouval/picturetank)
Well worth a read!
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