Flowers: How they changed the world
by William C. Burger
Summary
What are flowers really for? As William Burger makes clear in this enchanting book, the quick and simple answer is: sex. Burger emphasizes the essential role that flowers play in life’s evolutionary scheme. Flowers are the fundamental energy resource for most of the biosphere. Since they energize themselves by capturing the energy of sunlight, they provide a vital link in the chain of life. Written with clarity, wit, and engaging enthusiasm for the marvels of our fragile ecosystem, Flowers will make you stop and smell the roses with a new appreciation of their crucial role in the web of life.
Excerpt
Surely, flowers are among the most endearing aspects of our environment. Be it in a carefully tended garden, a tallgrass prairie, or even a vacant lot, their bright, cheery colors help make the world a more pleasant place to be. Whether borne by a little weed at the edge of your driveway or covering the surface of a tropical tree, flowers add a significant dash of color in our natural surroundings. However, such floral exuberance is limited to the lush growing season. Prolonged dry seasons or severe winters will cast a pall of lifelessness across the landscape. But start adding warmth in our northern springtime, or bring on the rains after a long tropical dry season, and the natural world becomes transformed. Both the warmer temperatures of springtime and the renewed growth of a rainy season begin a flurry of plant activity. Many species flower quickly, though others build their greenery first and display their flowers later. All participate in a seasonal progression that is repeated year after year. Likewise, fruiting and seed production are precisely timed for each species. Unusually stressful seasons, prolonged drought, or local calamity may disrupt these patterns, but plant life soon recovers and is back into synchrony with our planet’s yearly journey round the sun.
Flowering plants follow in cadence with our annual cycle of seasons; that same cadence is also central to our own daily lives?as it has been ever since we were hunters and gatherers, tens of thousands of years ago. The invention of agriculture bound us even more tightly to the seasons. Though preparing the ground for planting and caring for domesticated animals may have more severely constrained our lives, these innovations helped multiply our numbers. Thanks to our new “partners”?both plants and animals?we humans now had a more assured food supply. Agriculture became a very special symbiosis between ourselves and a few species of useful plants and animals. Based on this new relationship, and in the right locations, humans were able to build grand civilizations. Even today, in our complex technological world, it is the flowering plants that provide us with nearly all the vegetable energy that sustains us. Flowering plants also provide the feed and pasture for most of the animals that help nourish us. Clearly, flowers and the plants that bear them have played a critical role in the human saga.
With a love for flowering plants that only avid gardeners can truly appreciate, my mother imparted some of her enthusiasms to me. When I was little, I was quite convinced that plants produced flowers because they were happy. I had noticed that the woods had very few flowers, and it seemed obvious that those woodland plants weren’t nearly as happy as those in my mother’s carefully tended garden. Better yet, that happiness was shared with busy bees and lovely butterflies that regularly visited our garden. Each year of my childhood, I became further captivated by the colorful opulence of the blooming season.
Reviews
"[E]ngaging and beautifully written “-- Publishers Weekly
"[T]he evolutionary history of flowering plants...in an appealing, conversational style"--Booklist
"[W]ide ranging romp through the world of flowers...A wonderful book”?Professor Sir Peter Crane FRS, Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Author's Biography
William C. Burger is Curator Emeritus of the Department of Botany at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of the highly acclaimed Perfect Planet, Clever Species.