How Flowers Made Our World
The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 26 Mar 2026
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- 129,00 kr
Publisher Description
In How Flowers Made Our World, biologist David George Haskell redefines our understanding of flowers, casting them as powerful revolutionaries at the heart of Earth's story.
"Flowering plants as you've never seen them before ... Science writing with sensuality, sensitivity and soul." Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment
"Vividly written. David George Haskell shows how the most trivialized part of the natural world is among its most powerful and essential.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell’s Roses
"David George Haskell's great strength as a writer is that he is open to surprise. He regards the planet as a strange and beautiful place. How Flowers Made Our World is at once closely observed, richly reported, and mind-blowing.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
Far from being mere ornaments, flowers have shaped the very fabric of life on our planet. Their evolution triggered a cascade of biodiversity, transforming oceans, creating new habitats, and even altering the climate. Their beauty turned adversaries into allies, and their adaptability turned environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal.
Weaving together vivid storytelling, lyrical writing, and cutting-edge science, Haskell illuminates flowers as portals into deep time and essential players in our ecological future. He reveals how flowers built and sustained ecosystems from rainforests to prairies and have been pivotal in the evolution of species like butterflies, bees, and birds. He also uncovers their crucial role in human history, as cultural emblems, keys to scientific leaps, and evolutionary catalysts, with flowering grasses calling our ancestors to leave the trees, laying the foundation for agriculture and modern civilization.
From lessons in resilience and creativity found among gardeners’ favourites, such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, to rediscovering lesser-known wonders, like our uncelebrated underwater meadows that sustain life and the secrets of our most humble wildflowers, How Flowers Made Our World invites readers to see these blooms in a whole new light—as the dynamic and influential forces they truly are.
"In this dazzling book, scintillating with wonder and scholarship, Haskell shows us how flowers – so often belittled and misunderstood, have shaped ecology, and so shaped us. Flowers are tectonic, and here is a book worthy of them.”—Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World
"Joyful ... brimming with curiosity, humour, and crystal-clear scientific delights. How Flowers Made Our World is a celebration of the inventiveness of floral life.” Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flowers "belong at the center of the story of how our world came to be," argues biologist Haskell (Sounds Wild and Broken) in this passionate examination. Compared to other lifeforms, flowers were "latecomers," evolving after many complex animals in the fossil record some 150–200 million years ago. The plants quickly diversified and became "champion relationship-builders," as insects, birds, and other animals came to rely on them for food and shelter. Haskell explains how the study of goatsbeard helped scientists discover that some flowering plants duplicate their genomes, a process that allows them to adapt and evolve. The flexibility of plant genetics enabled the development of important crops that supported agrarian civilizations, like wheat, oats, potato, and cotton. Grass, another flowering plant, has also been key to sustaining human populations, building organic and fertile soils and forming a large portion of the calories people consume (rice, maize, and wheat are all grasses). Elsewhere, Haskell demonstrates how flowers elucidate the past—Carl Linnaeus's classification of flowers in the 18th century helped usher in the theory of evolution—and offer lessons for the future, such as "thriving worlds grow from cooperation." Through deep research and lyrical prose, Haskell triumphantly recasts the role of flowers as foundational to humanity. This is astonishing.
