Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers

Rating:
Summary: Science and poetry meet in a rose
Review: This wonderful little book is a revelation for anyone who has always seen flowers, but never understood them. Russell writes like a modern day Thoreau, deeply attuned to the beauty and wonder of nature. She marries her aesthetic appreciation of flowers to a scientific understanding of their secret, busy lives. Each chapter is filled to the brim with fascinating facts about how flowers behave - why they smell like they do, how petals and pollen work, even how dinosaurs may have been the midwives to all flowers today.

I read science books all the time, and few have the grace and appeal of this slim volume. Russell makes it clear that to those who will stop and smell the roses, the Earth is always an awe-inspiring garden, even on the darkest of days. A real treasure, I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Explains and Explores the secret life of flowers
Review: Twelve poetic essays in which a nature writer draws on botanical research, theories of evolution, and her own emotional experiences to explore the roles flowers play in our lives. Throughout this poetic meditation, Russell ( When the Land Was Young , 1996, etc.) maintains that people need blossoms for both ecological survival and personal well-being. She eroticizes the physical features of flowers throughout (speaking, in one vivid passage, of how "pansies wait expectantly, their vulviform faces lifted to the sky"), and these impassioned descriptions, reminiscent of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, may offer some amusement to botanists while enlightening amateur gardeners. There are descriptions of flowers' complex romances with their pollinators that reveal how both blossoms and bugs have evolved to accommodate each other. We are even introduced to various species of fleurs fatales whose seductive charm lures naïve pollinators to their deaths-including a hermaphroditic water lily that, during its female stage, murders the trusting hoverflies it once fed. While Russell cites Charles Darwin and other famed biologists, her lyrical ruminations do not provide new insight into biological evolution. Still, her unique interpretations of natural selection provide some dramatic scenes, for example, when bumblebee thieves attack flowers for nectar. More personal stories of Russell's friends dashing home to view the rare blossoming of their cereus cacti and accounts of prehistoric humans burying their loved ones with flowers support the author's claim that all people have an intrinsic fascination with flowers. But her argument for the protection of endangered species, although valid, is flimsy in comparison to authoritative studies, like David S. Wilcove's The Condor's Shadow (2000). A modestly satisfying read for flower fanatics.