Discovered in 1837 in Guiana and named for the newly crowned Queen Victoria of England, Victoria regia – the enormous Amazonian water lily now known as Victoria amazonica – became the botanical obsession of Victorian England.
The Flower of Empire
Botany
Out of Nature
Kara Rogers‘ new book Out of Nature; Why Drugs from Plants Matter to the Future of Humanity instantly went to the top of my “to read” short list the moment I finished reading the press release about it from the University of Arizona Press. After all, the combination of botany and ecology with the all-too-pressing but seldom […]
Gathering Moss
Too small to be seen in detail without a strong hand lens and existing in a layer of atmosphere surrounding all terrestrial objects that is too subtle for our crude senses to perceive, mosses flourish throughout the world playing roles in the global ecosystem that we are only beginning to understand.