Exploring the universe of our planet’s plants
THE plant world is, or seems to be, a very long way from the marvels of space or of cosmology, yet this valuable book can assert its right to be regarded as the explorer of another universe, that of this planet’s plants. And universe they are, creeping along through millennia in the shape, for example, of the Californian bristlecone pine, described by author Stephen Harris as “the Methuselah of the plant kingdom”. Methuselah indeed, given that these trees are nearly 5,000 years old yet continue to produce seed.
Notwithstanding the long time-span at his disposal Harris, Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria, confines his study of cultivation to the centuries from 1501 to 1900; these were the centuries during which the study of plant life and the intricacies of its history, propagation and purpose began to flourish. The starting point of 1501 denotes the appearance of the earliest printed botanical books, the closure of 1900 signals the hugely significant advance of genetic investigation. This of course continues: the controversy aroused by the arrival of GM seeds is only one modern example of how botanical research and plant biology feed not only into public life but into the public imagination.
