What a spectacular plant! Native to tropical and subtropical regions, it thrives upon warmth and moisture for growth and requires dry weather for the seeds…
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.
Annona are tropical trees or shrubs : taprooted, evergreen or semideciduous. They grow at lower altitudes of 0-1,500 m (0-4,900 ft) in areas of Central…
An underground resistance network. For several millennia, humans have exchanged brightly colored flowers, in a so-called language of flowers — primarily to communicate their love.…
Among the Angiosperms, the Grevillea genus counts no fewer than 360 species, in the family of Proteaceae. They range in height from small shrubs, 50…
A palm-tree with a fiery streak! A tall tree that rises up to 20 m, it makes an unforgettable sight with the vivid red of…
There are an estimated 352,000 species of flowering plants, known as angiosperms. There are more than 1,000 species of gymnosperms, with conifers predominant amongst them.…
Its common name is Scotch broom (Spanish broom is a kindred species). It is highly visible in the spring, in many parts of the world :…
Terminalia catappa (Combretaceae).This handsome tree is commonly known under names such as tropical almond tree or Indian almond tree. It grows to 35 m (75-115…
This tree — the Joshua tree, to use its common name — has the Mojave desert — in the states of Arizona, Utah, California, Nevada—…
This species is native to high forest areas of western Asia from Iran to the Balkans. From there, domestication brought it to Western Europe. Chestnut…