One of the challenges facing the reader when the subject of a book, article, or particularly social media post is plants is sorting through what is accurate, well-established information from what is… well, manure. It’s not that all the authors of the latter are necessarily trying to mislead their readers (although some likely are), it’s just that plants are ubiquitous but woefully poorly understood by most people, leaving ample room for everything from innocent anthropomorphisation of their biology and behavior to wilful propagation of poor quality research and even garden-variety nonsense to make the rounds. Fortunately, some authors who possess genuine, well-founded knowledge of the subject, such as Prof. Tim Entwisle, are making the effort to weed out the bad information so that the good may bear fruit.
Prof. Entwisle‘s recently published book The Sceptical Botanist; Separating Fact from Fiction presents a delightful collection of fifty essays that offer the reader interesting information, as well as a healthy amount of debunking of dubious popularly held opinions, about plants. A highly respected botanist, broadcaster, and author with over thirty years’ experience as head of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and Melbourne, and in a senior role at Kew Gardens in London, Prof. Entwisle’s authority on the subject is most assuredly trustworthy, and his writing style is casual and playful yet with just the right amount of confidence clearly grounded in an extensive knowledge of his subject to provide his readers assurance that what he has written is worth remembering.
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