The Cabaret of Plants
Botany and the Imagination
-
- $8.99
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
In The Cabaret of Plants, Mabey explores the plant species which have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty and belief.
Picked from every walk of life, they encompass crops, weeds, medicines, religious gathering-places and a water lily named after a queen. Beginning with pagan cults and creation myths, the cultural significance of plants has burst upwards, sprouting into forms as diverse as the panacea (the cure-all plant ginseng, a single root of which can cost up to $10,000), Newton's apple, the African 'vegetable elephant' or boabab - and the mystical, night-flowering Amazonian cactus, the moonflower.
Ranging widely across science, art and cultural history, poetry and personal experience, Mabey puts plants centre stage, and reveals a true botanical cabaret, a world of tricksters, shape-shifters and inspired problem-solvers, as well as an enthralled audience of romantics, eccentric amateur scientists and transgressive artists. The Cabaret of Plants celebrates the idea that plants are not simply 'the furniture of the planet', but vital, inventive, individual beings worthy of respect - and that to understand this may be the best way of preserving life together on Earth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his inimitable style, English naturalist Mabey (The Ash and the Beech) blends genres to produce a work that demonstrates his passion for the lives of plants. By incorporating natural history, travel writing, and mainstream botany into a text rich with philosophy, poetry, and visual art, Mabey brings a sense of excitement and vitality to his material (the book's illustrations are paired well with the text and greatly enhance it). One of his goals is to move readers beyond the simplistic idea that plants are passive and uninteresting members of ecosystems. As he explains it, he has written a "story about plants as authors of their own lives and an argument that ignoring their vitality impoverishes our imaginations and our well-being." He succeeds admirably in this task, whether he is discussing the 20,000 varieties of apples that have been bred from a single original stock, the critical role that olive trees played in the development of Impressionist art, or the complex ways in which plants communicate with one another. Mabey is delightfully eclectic in his approach, often touching on those species with which he has a personal connection, but he consistently advances his central theme while providing interesting insights and opinions. Illus.
