Plants Of Eden

Author : Amanda Harris
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813059348
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fruits of Eden written by Amanda Harris and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the nineteenth century—when most food in America was bland and brown and few people appreciated the economic potential of then-exotic foods—David Fairchild convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance overseas explorations to find and bring back foreign cultivars. Fairchild traveled to remote corners of the globe, searching for fruits, vegetables, and grains that could find a new home in American fields and in the American diet. In Fruits of Eden, Amanda Harris vividly recounts the exploits of Fairchild and his small band of adventurers and botanists as they traversed distant lands—Algeria, Baghdad, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Java, and Zanzibar—to return with new and exciting flavors. Their expeditions led to a renaissance not only at the dinner table but also in horticulture, providing diversity of crops for farmers across the country. Not everyone was supportive, however. The scientific community was concerned with invasive species, and World War I fanned the flames of xenophobia in Washington. Adversaries who believed Fairchild’s discoveries would contaminate the purity of native crops eventually shut down his program, but his legacy lives on in today’s modern kitchen, where navel oranges, Meyer lemons, honeydew melons, soybeans, and durum wheat are now standard.

Author : Louise Frost
Publisher : Alison Hodge Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780906720295
Total Pages : 68 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plants of Eden written by Louise Frost and published by Alison Hodge Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on plants, this book covers plants in each of the three biomes - Humid Tropics, Warm Temperate and Temperate. It also tells the stories of some of the stars in this living theatre of plants and people: where the plants come from; how they grow and are harvested; what people use them for, and how and when some of them arrived in Britain.

Author : David Beerling
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192519212
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Eden written by David Beerling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 7 billion people depend on plants for healthy, productive, secure lives, but few of us stop to consider the origin of the plant kingdom that turned the world green and made our lives possible. And as the human population continues to escalate, our survival depends on how we treat the plant kingdom and the soils that sustain it. Understanding the evolutionary history of our land floras, the story of how plant life emerged from water and conquered the continents to dominate the planet, is fundamental to our own existence. In Making Eden David Beerling reveals the hidden history of Earth's sun-shot greenery, and considers its future prospects as we farm the planet to feed the world. Describing the early plant pioneers and their close, symbiotic relationship with fungi, he examines the central role plants play in both ecosystems and the regulation of climate. As threats to plant biodiversity mount today, Beerling discusses the resultant implications for food security and climate change, and how these can be avoided. Drawing on the latest exciting scientific findings, including Beerling's own field work in the UK, North America, and New Zealand, and his experimental research programmes over the past decade, this is an exciting new take on how plants greened the continents.

Author : Jethro Kloss
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781258126933
Total Pages : 700 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Back to Eden written by Jethro Kloss and published by . This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...set[s] forth his method of natural self healing based on herbs, a diet that used no meat, dairy products, or eggs, and a life in harmony with the laws of health and nature. He opposed the use of sugar, spices, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and fermented foods. He recommended the use of soymilk in numerous healing diets and considered it far better than cow's milk. " -- www.SoyinfoCenter.com.

Author : Jonathan Silvertown
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226757773
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Demons in Eden written by Jonathan Silvertown and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of evolution lies a bewildering paradox. Natural selection favors above all the individual that leaves the most offspring—a superorganism of sorts that Jonathan Silvertown here calls the "Darwinian demon." But if such a demon existed, this highly successful organism would populate the entire world with its own kind, beating out other species and eventually extinguishing biodiversity as we know it. Why then, if evolution favors this demon, is the world filled with so many different life forms? What keeps this Darwinian demon in check? If humankind is now the greatest threat to biodiversity on the planet, have we become the Darwinian demon? Demons in Eden considers these questions using the latest scientific discoveries from the plant world. Readers join Silvertown as he explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary novelties—and exotic plant life—have earned it the sobriquet "the Galapagos of botany." Along the way, Silvertown looks closely at the evolution of plant diversity in these locales and explains why such variety persists in light of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes. In novel and useful ways, he also investigates the current state of plant diversity on the planet to show the ever-challenging threats posed by invasive species and humans. Bringing the secret life of plants into more colorful and vivid focus than ever before, Demons in Eden is an empathic and impassioned exploration of modern plant ecology that unlocks evolutionary mysteries of the natural world.

Author : Victoria Johnson
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631494201
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic written by Victoria Johnson and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection The untold story of Hamilton’s—and Burr’s—personal physician, whose dream to build America’s first botanical garden inspired the young Republic. On a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. Hamilton took just two men with him: his “second” for the duel, and Dr. David Hosack. As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack—who until now has been lost in the fog of history—was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation. Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to American. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette. One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center. Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.

Author : Robert A. Voeks
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022654785X
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ethnobotany of Eden written by Robert A. Voeks and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mysterious and pristine forests of the tropics, a wealth of ethnobotanical panaceas and shamanic knowledge promises cures for everything from cancer and AIDS to the common cold. To access such miracles, we need only to discover and protect these medicinal treasures before they succumb to the corrosive forces of the modern world. A compelling biocultural story, certainly, and a popular perspective on the lands and peoples of equatorial latitudes—but true? Only in part. In The Ethnobotany of Eden, geographer Robert A. Voeks unravels the long lianas of history and occasional strands of truth that gave rise to this irresistible jungle medicine narrative. By exploring the interconnected worlds of anthropology, botany, and geography, Voeks shows that well-intentioned scientists and environmentalists originally crafted the jungle narrative with the primary goal of saving the world’s tropical rainforests from destruction. It was a strategy deployed to address a pressing environmental problem, one that appeared at a propitious point in history just as the Western world was taking a more globalized view of environmental issues. And yet, although supported by science and its practitioners, the story was also underpinned by a persuasive mix of myth, sentimentality, and nostalgia for a long-lost tropical Eden. Resurrecting the fascinating history of plant prospecting in the tropics, from the colonial era to the present day, The Ethnobotany of Eden rewrites with modern science the degradation narrative we’ve built up around tropical forests, revealing the entangled origins of our fables of forest cures.

Author : Louise Frost
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Plants of Eden written by Louise Frost and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Umberto Pasti
Publisher : Rizzoli Publications
ISBN 13 : 0847864804
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Eden Revisited written by Umberto Pasti and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lovingly photographed tour of internationally renowned writer Umberto Pasti's famous hillside garden in Morocco. Italian writer and horticulturist Umberto Pasti's passion for the wild flora of Tangier and its surrounding region led him to create his world-famous garden, Rohuna, where he has transplanted thousands of plants rescued from construction sites with the aid of men from the village. Planted between two small houses is the Garden of Consolation: a series of rooms and terraces with lush vegetation, some rendering homage to the paintings of Henri Rousseau, others inspired by invented characters. Surrounding the Garden of Consolation are the Wild Garden and a hillside devoted to the wild flowering bulbs of northern Morocco, where indigenous species of narcissus, iris, crocus, scilla, gladiolus, and others bloom. With its stunning vistas and verdant fields, Rohuna is a garden of incomparable beauty with the mission to preserve the botanical richness of the region. Captured here in detail by celebrated photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo, the poetic beauty of this special and unique place is lovingly rendered for all the world to see and share.

Author : Megumi Oshima
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1462919219
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Miniature Moss Gardens written by Megumi Oshima and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miniature Moss Gardens presents expert advice and techniques from the birthplace of miniature gardening—Japan. Friendly enough for total beginners and full of ideas and tips that experienced gardeners will love to read about, this moss gardening book brings you information on the following: Finding and collecting moss Cultivation and maintenance Choosing soils and other components Designing your garden for visual effect Choosing the best plants for your mini garden How to make a perfect Kokedama or moss ball Enhancing your moss garden with rocks and other elements How to make a gorgeous terrarium and much more! A section on finding moss on city streets, parks and mountains opens your eyes to the beauty that's all around you every day! Moss can be gathered to make a complete and perfect miniature gardening world. Let this fun Japanese gardening book set you on the path to a deeply satisfying new way of expressing yourself. With full-color photographs and step-by-step instructions you will be creating your own Moss Garden in no time!