It grows on sunny slopes, up to 2,500 m (8,000 ft), in mountain pastures and in nearby screes. It prefers limestone locations. Perennial rosettes of…
A scientist and a writer
Category: Plants
Botany, which I did study awhile in my youth, holds a continued interest.
Plants are remarkable organisms.
In writing about them, in these small vignettes I try to combine the scientific and the cultural, the bucolic and the utilitarian, and to convey some of my sense of wonder – in brief to try and emulate some of the eighteenth-century natural historians, with the information now available to us.
This mountain plant from the citrus family is attractive with its clusters of pink flowers and its citrus-like perfume. The latter is due to volatile…
Conventional accounts of this plant put the emphasis on the ploy it uses to defend against herbivores, its uncanny resemblance in appearance to stinging nettles.…
Nettles are a familiar sight. No wonder, they are found everywhere. They are widespread throughout Europe and North America, North Africa and in parts of…
Jars of mustard were occupying entire shelves in French supermarkets. Suddenly, in April 2022, these shelves were empty. Mustard relish had become unavailable. Why? What…
A very tall tree from West Africa. With sapelli as its common name, its wood, referred to as African mahogany, is valuable. But this may…
Prunus is a large genus in the Rosaceae family with more than 200 species. Prunus dulcis is among the three most economically important of the…
Bruce Chatwin in Songlines, this gem of a book (1987), has exquisitely recounted how the Australian Aborigines turned the whole continent into their museum, with…
Colors of flowers, generally speaking, are due to anthocyan pigmnts — sometimes to carotenoids. Leaves most often owe their green to chlorophyll.Fruit owe their reddish…
This tree is utterly toxic, from all parts; it was planted to protect and shade churchyards from the beginnings of Christianity, or even earlier; wielding…